lll*llllllllllllllll'llillll 


qaern  Lhurc 

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n  Haynes  Holmes 


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BV  600  .H72  1912 

Holmes,  John  Haynes,  1879- 

1964. 
The  revolutionary  function 

of  the  modern  Church 


The 

Revolutionary  Function  of 

the   Modern  Church 

MOV  1 3  1912 
By  ^^m^ 

John  Haynes  Holmes 

(Minister  of  the  Church  of  the  Messiah,  New  York) 


"  The  old  order  changeth,  yielding  place  to  new, 
And  God  fulfils  himself  in  many  ways, 
Lest  one  good  custom  should  corrupt  the  world." 

Tennyson  :  I(/y//s  of  the  King. 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 
New  York  and  London 

1912 


Copyright,  ign 

BY 

JOHN  HAYNES  HOLMES 


•Cbe  mnfcfterbocfter  fitees,  ■«ew  Sorft 


^0 

THE  GLORIOUS   MEMORY   OF 

THEODORE   PARKER 


"  The  religious  faculty  is  the  natural  ruler  in  all  the  commonwealth  of  man. 
Therefore  have  I  always  taught  the  supremacy  of  religion  and  its  commanding 
power  in  every  relation  of  life,  both  the  life  of  the  individual  and  the  life  of  the 
state." 


PREFACE 

THIS  book  is  at  once  a  survey,  an  argument,  and 
a  plea.  It  is  a  survey  of  much  of  the  best 
thought  of  our  time  upon  many  of  the  phases  of 
what  is  known  as  the  social  question ;  it  is  an  argu- 
ment for  the  essential  identification  of  religion  and 
the  social  question;  and  it  is  a  plea  for  the  recog- 
nition of  this  identification  upon  the  part  of  those 
who  control  the  church. 

Many  books  have  been  written  during  the  last 
few  years  upon  the  social  aspects  of  religion,  and 
this  book  may  perhaps  be  regarded  as  only  one 
more.  No  one  of  these  books,  however,  so  far  as  I 
know,  (i)  has  gathered  up  the  lessons  learned  of  late 
in  other  fields  of  social  experience  and  shown  their 
meaning  in  terms  of  religion;  (2)  has  shown  that 
the  question  of  the  church  is  thus  not  something 
apart  by  itself,  but  only  one  phase  of  the  modem 
social  question  as  a  whole ;  (3)  or  has  shown  the  one 
fundamental  reason  why,  in  dealing  with  the  individ- 
ual, the  church,  like  every  other  redemptive  agency, 
must  go  behind  the  individual  and  grapple  with  the 
social  organism  itself.  It  is  these  three  things  that 
this  book  attempts  to  do ;  and  it  may  therefore  not 
unjustly  be  described,  perhaps,  as  breaking  some 
new  ground  in  this  much-ploughed  field. 


vi  Preface 

The  substance  of  this  book  has  been  stated  many- 
times  during  the  past  year  in  public  addresses  in 
the  pulpit  and  on  the  platform.  The  material, 
however,  has  been  rearranged,  and  much  new 
material  added;  so  that  the  work,  as  here  pre- 
sented, is  practically  new.  It  is  sent  forth  to  that 
larger  audience  of  readers,  which  can  never  be 
reached  by  the  spoken  word,  with  much  misgiving 
and  many  fears,  but  in  the  fervent  hope  that  it  may 
at  least  quicken  some  minds  to  a  new  understand- 
ing of  religion,  and  awaken  some  hearts  to  a  new 
service  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  on  earth. 

J.  H.  H. 

Church  of  the  Messiah 
New  York  City. 


PAGE 
I 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER 

I.— Introductory— The  Religious  Unrest 

(A)— The     New     Theology  — A     New 

Creed 

(B)— The   New  ReHgion— A  New  Pro- 
gram of  Action 

II-— The    Work  of    the  Church    in    the 
Past — Individualism    •      .        .        . 

(A)— The  Individual  and  his  Salvation 
(B)— The  Methods  of  Salvation  .        .       i8 
(i) — Catholic     .         .         .         .       i8 
(2) — Protestant 

(3) — Liberal       .... 
(C) — The  Common  Conception  of  Indi- 
vidualism     Underlying      these 
Methods    .         .  ^e 

III.— What  Is  an  Individual?      ...      36 
(A)— The     Individual    as     a     Social 

Creature ^y 

(B)— Modern  Emphasis  upon  this  Fact  42 
(i) — The  Law  of  Evolution  .  42 
(2)— Social  Complexity  of  Civil- 


13 
13 


20 
22 


isation 
vii 


59 


viii  Contents 

CHAPTER 

IV. — The  Social  Question     . 

(A) — The  Individual  Socialised    . 
(B) — Physical  Disease 

(i) — Disease  Individual     . 
(2) — Disease  Social  in  its  Con 

sequences 
(3) — Disease  Social  in  its  Causes 
(a) — Infant  Mortality 
(b) — Tuberculosis  . 
(c) — Hospital  Social  Ser 

vice 
(d) — Society  of   Medical 
Sociology 
(C)— Poverty       .... 

(i) — Progress       and      Poverty 

Together 
(2) — Causes  of  Poverty 

(a)— The  Will  of  God 
(b) — The     Niggardliness 

of  Nature 
(c) — Individual  Frailty 
(d) — Social  Conditions 
(3) — Poverty,  a  Social  Crime 

V. — The  Social  Question  in  Religion 
(A) — Sin  and  its  Causes 

(i) — Sin  Individual — Total  De 

pravity    . 
(2) — Sin  Social 

(a) — Human      Natur( 
Good,  not  Bad 


Contents 


IX 


(b) — ' '  Sin  is  Misery ;  Mis- 
ery is  Poverty;  the 
Antidote   of  Pov- 
erty is  Income  "  .     138 
(i) — Criminality  .     143 
(2) — Juvenile  De- 
linquency .     146 
(3) — Prostitution.     152 

VI —The  Church  and  the  Social  Question     167 

(A) — Theodore  Parker  .         .         .167 

(B)— Social    Reform    as    the    Modern 

Method  of  Individual  Salvation  171 
(i) — The  New  Conception  of 
the  Function  of  the 
Church  .  .  .  .177 
(2) — The  Indefinite  Extension 
of  the  Field  of  Religious 
Activity  .         .         .178 

(C)— Jesus  as  the  Prophet  of  Socialised 

Religion 182 

VII.— Obstacles  in  the  Way  of  the  Social- 
ised Church 20^ 

(A)— The  Philosophy  of  Individualism  205 
(B) — Denominationalism  .  .  .  206 
(C)— Other-Worldliness        .         .         .209 

(D)— Dogma 211 

(E) — Sacred  vs.  Secular  .  .  .213 
(F) — Class  Consciousness     .        .         .217 

VIII.— The  New  Church        ....    222 


X  Contents 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

IX. — Objections 227 

(A) — Human  Nature  cannot  be  Changed 

by  Law  .....  228 
(B) — How     Change     Society     except 

through  Good  Men?  .         .    236 

X. — Conclusion 250 

(A) — Summary  of  Argument        .         .     250 
(B)— The  Final  Outcome— The  Ban- 
ishment   of    Sin — A    Perfected 
Humanity — The    Kingdom    of 
God r     253 


Appendix 259 


"  The  Christian  church  should  lead  the  civilisation  of  the  age. 
It  should  lead  the  way  in  all  moral  enterprises,  in  every  work 
which  aims  directly  at  the  welfare  of  men.  ...  Its  sacraments 
should  be  great  works  of  reform.  ...  Its  one  great  end  should 
be  the  building  of  a  state  where  there  is  honourable  work  for 
every  hand,  bread  for  all  mouths,  clothing  for  all  backs,  culture 
for  all  minds,  and  love  and  faith  in  every  heart. " 

Theodore  Parker. 


"  The  Christian  church  is  designed,   not  to  save  individuals 
out  of  the  world,  but  to  save  the  world  itself." 

Dean  Freemantle. 


"  Every  question  between  men  is  a  religious  question — a  ques- 
tion of  moral  economy  before  it  becomes  one  of  political  economy 
— and  makes  all  political,  industrial,  and  social  activities  fimc- 
tions  of  a  new  church." — Henry  D.  Lloyd. 


"  Christianity  cannot  be  proclaimed  and  instituted  apart 
from  the  social  life  of  the  community;  it  must  seek  a  simple  and 
natural  expression  in  the  social  organism  itself." — Jane  Addams. 


"  Sin  is  Misery;    Misery  is  Poverty;  the  Antidote  of  Poverty 
is  Income." — Simon  N.  Patten. 


'*  You  can't  let  men  live  like  pigs,  and  expect  them  to  be  good 
citizens." — Jacob  A.  Riis. 


"  The  doom  from  which  Christianity  seeks  to  save  the  indi- 
vidual is  the  doom  of  moral  individualism;  the  blessedness  into 
which  it  seeks  to  lead  him  is  the  blessedness  of  love. 

"The  church  is  in  the  world  to  save  the  world, — to  secure  in 
the  world  right  social  relations  among  men." 

Washington  Gladden. 


"  The  church  must  either  condemn  the  world  and  seek  to 
change  it,  or  tolerate  the  world  and  conform  to  it.  .  .  .  On  this 
choice  is  staked  the  future  of  the  church." 

Walter  Rauschenbusch. 
xi 


THE  REVOLUTIONARY  FUNCTION  OF  THE 
MODERN   CHURCH 


CHAPTER   I 

INTRODUCTORY— THE  RELIGIOUS  UNREST 

TO  say  that  we  are  living  in  an  age  of  strange 
transition  and  disorder,  is  to  repeat  one  of 
the  most  familiar  commonplaces  of  the  times;  and 
yet  no  other  statement  is  adequate  as  a  description 
of  the  present  day.  It  is  to  be  supposed  that  cen- 
turies hence  the  historians  of  himian  progress  will 
be  able  to  characterise  our  era  with  that  same 
degree  of  exactitude  with  which  contemporary 
historians  characterise  the  various  epochs  of  the 
past;  but  to-day  it  is  impossible  to  say  anything 
more  precise  than  that  the  old  is  going  and  the  new 
is  not  yet  come.  Institutions  which  we  had  come 
to  regard  as  in  some  sense  divinely  ordained  and 
thus  destined  to  endure  so  long  as  humanity 
should  exist  upon  the  earth  seem  now  to  be  crum- 
bling away  before  our  very  face  and  eyes,  and  we 
know  not  what  institutions  are  to  be  planned  and 
reared  in  their  stead.  Principles  of  government, 
education,  and  business  which  we  had  learned  to 


2  Function  of  the  Church 

accept  as  ultimate  achievements  of  human  wisdom 
and  hence  as  final  formulations  of  social  order,  are 
falling  daily  into  ever  greater  disrepute,  and  in 
our  failure  to  discover  any  new  and  safer  principles 
we  seem  to  be  drifting  straight  into  a  condition  of 
general  anarchy.  Even  our  ethical  and  spiritual 
ideals  are  being  called  into  question,  and  the 
demand  is  being  heard  upon  every  hand  for  new 
standards  of  individual  and  social  morality.  What 
it  all  means  and  where  it  is  all  going  to  take  us, 
no  man  can  say.  But  that  the  present  state  of 
chaos  just  as  surely  means  the  ending  of  one  epoch 
of  human  history  and  the  beginning  of  another  as 
the  great  upheaval  of  the  Renaissance  meant  the 
close  of  the  Middle  Ages  and  the  opening  of  modem 
times,  is  perfectly  evident  to  even  the  most  casual 
observer  of  social  evolution. 

(a)  the  new  theology — ^A  NEW  CREED 

Sharing  with  every  other  institution  in  the  trans- 
ition character  of  the  age,  is  of  course  the  church. 
In  the  realm  of  religion,  as  in  every  other  realm  of 
human  activity,  there  are  confusion  and  disorder, 
and  the  apprehension  of  impending  change;  but 
beyond  the  certainty  that  the  old  religion  is  no 
longer  expressive  of  the  thoughts  and  aspirations 
of  modem  times,  and  that  a  new  religion  must 
come  to  match  the  new  age  as  the  old  religion 
matched  the  old,  if  religion  in  its  organised  form 
at  least  is  not  to  disappear  altogether,  nothing 


Introductory — The  Religious  Unrest     3 

seems  to  be  at  all  sure  as  regards  the  future.  That 
man  is  "incurably  religious,"  and  that  religion  is 
therefore  destined  to  endure  in  some  form  or  other, 
amid  all  vicissitudes  and  transformations,  as  "an 
everlasting  reality," — to  quote  the  famous  phrase 
of  John  Fiske, — seems  to  be  as  firmly  believed 
to-day  as  ever.  And  therefore  are  many  of  the 
acutest  minds  and  bravest  hearts  of  our  time  giv- 
ing themselves  to  the  study  of  religion  in  the  light 
of  the  new  knowledge  and  new  aspirations  of  this 
modem  Renaissance,  and  attempting  to  formulate, 
as  best  they  can,  a  new  religion  which  shall  be  a 
vital  expression  of  the  present  age  and  hence  a 
worthy  successor  to  the  old. 

Quite  naturally,  as  religion  in  the  past  has 
always  been  so  closely  identified  with  theology,  it 
is  in  the  field  of  thought  that  the  new  religion  of 
our  time  is  working  itself  out  with  the  greatest 
degree  of  clearness  and  with  the  largest  promise 
of  success.  "The  New  Theology,"  by  Dr.  R.  J. 
Campbell,  of  the  City  Temple,  London,  "The 
Rebirth  of  Religion,"  by  Dr.  A.  S.  Crapsey,  of 
the  Brotherhood,  in  Rochester,  New  York,  "The 
Coming  Religion,"  by  Dr.  C.  F.  Dole,  of  Boston, 
and  the  famous  address  on  "The  Religion  of  the 
Future,"  by  Dr.  Charles  W.  Eliot,  of  Harvard,  are 
only  a  few  of  the  more  conspicuous  and  notable 
illustrations  of  the  endeavours  which  have  been 
made  in  this  direction  within  recent  years;  and 
of  all  these  revolutionary  theological  utterances, 
perhaps  the  last  is  the  most  radical  and  for  that 


4  Function  of  the  Church 

reason  the  most  characteristic  of  the  intellectual 
unrest  of  the  age. 

In  this  remarkable  essay,  Dr.  Eliot  enumerates 
the  marvellous  advances  which  have  been  achieved 
even  during  the  comparatively  brief  period  of  his 
own  lifetime.  "My  point  of  view,"  he  says,  in 
explaining  why  it  is  necessary  for  him  to  believe  in 
a  new  religion  of  the  future 

is  that  of  one  whose  observing  and  thinking  life  covers 
the  extraordinary  period  since  "  The  Voyage  of  the 
Beagle"  was  published,  anaesthesia  and  the  tele- 
graph came  into  use,  Herbert  Spencer  issued  his  first 
series  of  papers  on  evolution,  Kuenen,  Robertson 
Smith,  and  Wellhausen  developed  and  vindicated 
Biblical  criticism,  J.  S.  Mill's  "  Principles  of  Political 
Economy"  appeared,  and  the  United  States  by  going 
to  war  with  Mexico  set  in  operation  those  forces  which 
abolished  slavery  on  the  American  continent — the 
period  within  which  mechanical  power  came  to  be 
widely  distributed  through  the  explosive  engine  and 
the  applications  of  electricity,  and  all  the  great  fun- 
damental industries  of  civilised  mankind  were  recon- 
structed. 

In  other  words,  as  he  puts  it  in  another  place, 
his  address  was  written  from  the  point  of  view  of 
what  had  been  accomplished  by  the  nineteenth 
century,  which  "immeasurably  surpassed  all  the 
preceding  centuries  in  the  increase  of  knowledge." 

Now  the  theology  which  was  possible  at  the 
opening  of  this  period  is  impossible  to-day.    With 


Introductory — The  Religious  Unrest     5 

brilliant  intellectual  acumen,  Dr.  Eliot  lays  bare 
the  fallacies  of  the  old  doctrinal  beliefs — the  impos- 
sibilities of  the  traditional  teachings  of  the  church 
— and  shows  how  inevitable  it  is  that  "all  of  these 
former  things  shall  pass  away."  A  gardener  prun- 
ing a  tree  of  its  dead  and  withered  limbs,  or  a 
surgeon  cutting  away  the  diseased  parts  of  a 
himian  organism,  could  not  proceed  with  greater 
precision  or  thoroughness.  He  shows,  for  example, 
how  the  old  ideas  of  authority  are  no  longer  ac- 
ceptable to  the  modem  mind,  whether  authority 
be  lodged,  as  with  the  Catholic,  in  the  hierarchy  of 
the  church,  or,  as  with  the  Protestant,  in  the  pages 
of  a  holy  book.  Identifying  God  with  that  "one 
omnipresent  eternal  energy,  informing  and  inspir- 
ing the  whole  creation  at  every  instant  of  time, 
and  throughout  the  infinite  spaces,"  he  eHminates 
from  the  religion  of  the  future  every  element  of 
the  supernatural  or  miraculous,  contending  that 
henceforth  religion  must  be  wholly  natural,  con- 
forming "like  all  else  to  natural  law,  so  far  as  the 
range  of  law  has  been  determined."  With  almost 
ruthless  candour,  he  discards  all  the  consolations 
which  the  church  for  untold  ages  has  offered  in 
times  of  sorrow  and  disaster.  The  idea  of  evil  as 
preventive  or  curative  or  punitive,  the  idea  of 
heaven  as  the  abode  of  the  blessed  and  the  happy, 
the  idea  of  interpreting  all  phenomena  whether 
good  or  evil  as  expressions  of  the  all-wise  and  all- 
beneficent  will  of  God, — all  of  these  cherished 
doctrines   Dr.   Eliot  puts  aside   as   superstitions 


6  Function  of  the  Church 

which  can  no  longer  bring  satisfaction  or  comfort; 
and  asserts  that  in  the  future  the  church  will  teach 
men  not  to  bow  down  and  submit  to  evil,  but  to 
rise  up  and  conquer  it,  and  will  prepare  men  not 
to  anticipate  compensations  for  siiifering  in  some 
future  world,  but  to  accomplish  the  alleviation 
and  if  possible  the  destruction  of  the  causes  of  this 
suffering  in  this  present  world.  And  lastly,  Dr. 
Eliot  shows  that,  in  the  ultimate  analysis,  religion 
does  not  consist  of  belief  in  the  abstract  truth  of 
any  theological  dogmas  but  in  the  practice  of  the 
concrete  ideals  of  "love  toward  God  and  brother- 
liness  toward  man";  and,  in  the  supreme  exalta- 
tion of  this  conception  of  spiritual  goodwill,  as 
contrasted  with  the  traditional  conception  of 
intellectual  conformity  of  opinion,  he  sees  the  hope 
of  the  realisation  of  that  Christian  unity  for  which 
the  world  has  so  long  been  waiting.  These  are 
radical  utterances;  and  it  is  no  wonder,  perhaps, 
that  they  were  met  by  wide-spread  discussion  and 
indignant  protest.  But  they  constitute  a  definition 
of  the  "religion  of  the  future"  which  is  being  held 
in  greater  or  less  degree  by  all  of  the  courageously 
progressive  theologians  of  our  time,  and  which  is 
destined  ultimately  to  be  accepted,  in  its  general 
outlines,  by  all  of  the  Christian  world.  Even 
to-day  we  find  as  conservative  a  scholar  as  Prof. 
William  Adams  Brown,  a  member  of  the  faculty  of 
as  conservative  an  institution  as  the  Union  Theo- 
logical Seminary,  unfavourably  contrasting  "the 
theology    which    ignores    the    modem    scientific 


Introductory — The  Religious  Unrest     7 

movement  and  is  unaffected  in  method  by  the  re- 
sults of  that  movement"  with  "the  new  theology 
whose  method  is  determined  by  the  new  scientific 
movement  and  which  is  hospitable  to  its  results"; 
and  showing,  in  a  lengthy  and  weighty  article/ 
how  the  latter  is  not  only  destined  to  supersede 
the  former,  but  how  this  "new  theology"  itself 
is  destined  in  due  course  of  time  "to  give  place  to 
a  newer." 

(b)     the    new    religion — ^A    NEW     PROGRAM     OF 
ACTION 

More  important  than  the  new  theology  of  our 
time,  however,  is  the  new  conception  which  is  being 
formed  of  the  kind  of  work  which  the  church  ought 
to  accomplish  as  the  organised  expression  of  re- 
ligion. Not  only  is  a  new  creed  being  written  to-day 
for  the  intellectual  acceptance  of  the  church,  but 
a  new  program  is  being  laid  down  for  its  practical 
activity.  For  what  the  church  thought  yesterday 
about  the  concepts  of  theology  is  no  more  anti- 
quated to  the  modem  mind  than  what  the  church 
did  yesterday  in  the  name  of  religious  idealism. 
This  new  idea  of  the  kind  of  work  in  which  the 
church  must  be  engaged  is  partly  the  result,  of 
course,  of  the  new  theology  of  the  time.  New 
conceptions  of  God  and  the  human  soul,  and  of  the 
relation  existing  between  the  two,  have  resulted 
in  new  conceptions  of  the  particular  task  which 

*  See  "Harvard  Theological  Review,"  January,  191 1. 


8  Function  of  the  Church 

the  church  is  set  to  perform  in  the  world  of  men. 
But  more  important  in  this  direction  than  the 
influence  of  the  new  theology  has  been  the  influ- 
ence of  the  age  itself.  A  new  world,  brought  into 
being  within  fifty  years,  has  laid  upon  the  church, 
as  upon  every  other  human  institution,  a  new 
responsibility  and  challenged  it  to  a  new  and  un- 
familiar opportunity.  The  methods  which  were 
practised  in  the  old  world  with  success  are  proving 
to  be  failures  in  this  new  world  by  which  we  find 
ourselves  confronted.  The  ends  and  aims  which 
were  sought  yesterday  with  eagerness  and  avidity 
no  longer  arouse  to-day  even  the  most  languid  in- 
terest. The  church,  in  its  present  condition,  like 
every  other  traditional  institution  of  organised 
society,  seems  more  like  a  survival  of  the  ages  that 
are  gone  than  a  real  and  vital  force  in  the  age  that 
now  is.  Everywhere  is  it  coming  to  be  recognised 
that  the  church,  if  it  is  not  to  perish  utterly,  must 
not  only  adapt  itself  to  the  new  knowledge  of 
the  times,  but  to  the  new  ways  and  means  of  the 
times  as  well, — that  it  must  be  reconstructed 
from  the  bottom  up, — that  it  must  adopt  new 
methods,  walk  new  paths,  and  seek  new  goals. 
Hence  the  flood  of  books  which  has  been  pouring 
from  our  printing-presses  during  the  last  half- 
dozen  years  or  more,  dedicated  to  the  considera- 
tion of  the  great  question  of  the  church  and  the 
present  age,  of  which  Prof.  Peabody's  "Jesus 
Christ  and  the  Social  Question"  was  perhaps  the 
first,  Prof.  Simon  N.  Patten's  "The  Social  Basis 


Introductory — The  Religious  Unrest     9 

of  Religion"  is  for  the  moment  the  last,  and  Prof. 
Walter  Rauschenbusch's  "Christianity  and  the 
Social  Crisis"  by  all  odds  the  most  remarkable. 
The  hour  seems  to  have  struck  for  the  churches, 
as  for  the  other  traditional  institutions  of  society, 
when  "new  occasions  teach  new  duties";  the 
moment  seems  to  have  arrived  again,  in  the  unceas- 
ing course  of  time,  when  "ancient  good"  is  made 
"uncouth."  With  the  marvellous  advances  of  the 
last  century  in  the  knowledge  of  the  material  world, 
in  the  discovery  and  command  and  application  of 
natural  laws  and  forces,  in  the  understanding  of 
the  powers  and  needs  of  the  individual  life,  and  in 
the  organisation  of  political  and  industrial  and 
social  relationships,  have  come  new  ideas  and 
ideals  of  truly  revolutionary  import.  These  new 
ideas  and  ideals,  to-day  as  formerly,  are  reacting 
upon  every  instrument  of  human  activity,  both 
personal  and  institutional ;  and  the  church,  whether 
regarded  as  divine  or  human  in  its  origin  and 
character,  is  by  no  manner  of  means  exempt. 
These  new  conceptions  of  our  day,  says  Dr.  Eliot, 
in  his  "Religion  of  the  Future,"  "have  modified 
and  ought  to  modify  not  only  the  actual  work  done 
by  the  churches,  but  the  whole  conception  of  the 
function  of  the  churches." 

Now  right  here,  to  my  mind,  and  not  at  all  in  the 
field  of  theology,  with  its  vexing  controversies  and 
dissensions,  is  the  real  storm-centre  of  present- 
day  Christianity.  The  pressing  problem  of  our 
time  is  not  the  writing  of  a  new  creed  for  the  new 


10  Function  of  the  Church 

theology,  but  the  formulation  of  a  new  plan  of 
action  for  the  new  religion.  The  churches  of  our 
age,  in  their  organisation  and  methods  of  work 
and  principles  of  action,  are  not  churches  of  to-day 
at  all,  but  churches  of  yesterday.  They  are  still 
performing  old  and  traditional  "functions,"  which 
may  have  accomplished  something  in  the  old  world, 
but  which  can  accomplish  little  or  nothing  in  the 
new  world  in  which  we  find  ourselves  at  this  hour. 
They  are  still  carrying  on  a  type  of  work  which  is 
as  ill  adapted  to  the  conditions  of  contemporary 
life  as  the  shoemaker's  awl  and  hammer  to  the 
modem  condition  of  boot  and  shoe  manufacture. 
They  are  driving  the  stage-coach  in  the  age  of  the 
steam  railroad,  and  communicating  by  post-rider 
in  the  age  of  the  telegraph  and  telephone.  Take 
the  typical  churches  in  our  cities  and  towns  to-day 
with  their  antiquated  buildings,  their  out-of-date 
equipment,  their  time-worn  methods,  and  their 
medieval  theory  of  practical  action — and  what 
hopelessly  inefficient  instruments  of  religion  they 
really  are !  If  we  were  not  used  to  them  as  we  are 
used  to  a  hundred  and  one  out-worn  and  out- 
grown things  which  have  not  yet  disappeared,  we 
should  recognise,  as  our  descendants  will  surely 
recognise,  that  these  churches  are  as  out  of  place 
in  the  modem  world  as  a  knight  of  King  Arthur 
on  the  modem  battle-field,  or  a  Gutenberg  press  in 
a  modem  newspaper  office.  It  is  for  this  reason, 
to  my  mind,  far  more  than  for  its  reluctance 
to  rewrite  its  statements  of  theological  behef  in 


Introductory — The  Religious  Unrest    ii 

accordance  with  the  new  science  and  philosophy  of 
our  time,  that  the  church  has  forfeited  the  con- 
fidence of  the  majority  of  men,  and  thus  lost  its 
grip  upon  contemporary  life.  What  wonder  that 
churches  are  empty,  that  divinity  schools  are 
languishing  for  lack  of  students,  that  ministers  are 
discouraged,  and  that  the  institution  itself  no 
longer  wields  any  influence  in  society  commensu- 
rate with  its  vast  wealth  and  its  estimated  mem- 
bership! The  churches  of  to-day  are  not  worthy 
of  support,  for  the  simple  reason  that  they  are  not 
doing  twentieth-century  work  for  a  twentieth-cen- 
tury world.  What  we  need  is  a  waking  up  in  the 
field  of  ecclesiastical  practice  as  well  as  in  the  field 
of  theological  speculation.  What  we  must  have, 
if  the  church  is  to  survive  another  hundred  years, 
is  a  movement  of  "modernism"  in  the  world  of 
action  as  well  as  in  the  world  of  thought,  and  in 
Protestantism  as  well  as  in  Catholicism.  With  a 
new  theology  which  means  thought,  we  must  have 
a  new  religion  which  means  life — a  practical  strug- 
gle for  the  establishment  of  justice,  righteousness, 
and  peace  in  human  society.  And  this  means,  as  I 
need  not  point  out,  a  new  church  with  new  "func- 
tions" for  the  realisation  of  the  new  religion. 

It  is  these  new  and  revolutionary  "functions" 
of  this  new  church  of  the  new  religion  which  I  pro- 
pose to  set  forth  in  these  pages.  I  propose  to  ask. 
What  is  the  particular  work  which  this  new  church 
must  do  in  this  particular  period  of  human  history? 
— and  why?    What  are  the  ends  which  this  new 


12  Function  of  the  Church 

church  must  try  to  achieve  in  the  world  of  men  as  it 
exists  and  is  organised  to-day? — and  why?  What 
are  the  methods  which  this  new  church  must 
employ  for  the  practical  achievement  of  these 
ends? — and  why?  That  the  church  of  our  day 
and  generation  must  do  a  wholly  new  work  in  a 
wholly  new  way  is  quite  generally  recognised,  and 
has  been  asserted  again  and  again  in  I  know  not 
how  many  recent  addresses  and  books.  But  just 
what  this  new  work  is — just  why  this  particular 
kind  of  work  must  be  done  in  this  particular  kind 
of  way — and  just  what  relation  all  of  these  new 
"functions,"  to  use  Dr.  Eliot's  phrase  again,  bear 
to  the  general  character  of  modem  society,  has  not 
yet  been  adequately  explained — at  least  to  my 
knowledge !  To  meet  these  questions,  and  thus  to 
set  forth  the  revolutionary  function  of  the  modem 
church,  is  the  purpose  of  this  Httle  book! 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  WORK  OF   THE  CHURCH  IN  THE   PAST— INDI- 
VIDUALISM 

(a)   the  individual  and  his  SALVATION 

IT  is  fortunate  that,  at  the  very  opening  of  our 
discussion  of  this  momentous  problem,  which 
is  very  hkely  to  lead  to  some  more  or  less  violent 
expression  of  opposition,  we  find  a  statement  to 
which  everybody  can  assent.  For  I  imagine  that 
there  can  be  no  disagreement,  at  this  late  day,  as 
to  what  constitutes  the  real  work  in  the  world  of 
the  organised  forces  of  the  Christian  religion. 
This  work,  if  I  mistake  not,  concerns  itself  first, 
last,  and  all  the  time  with  the  individual  soul ;  and 
its  fimdamental  character  is  perhaps  best  simimed 
up  in  that  great  word  which  was  so  impressed  upon 
the  Christian  imagination  by  the  genius  of  St.  Paul 
— the  word,  "Salvation!"  The  one  specific  work 
of  the  church,  in  all  ages  of  its  history,  has  rightly 
been  to  "save"  the  individual — and  I  venture  to 
prophesy  that  this  will  continue  to  be  the  church's 
function  so  long  as  humanity  endures.  "I  am 
not  ashamed  of  the  gospel  of  Christ,"  wrote  St. 
Paul  to  the  Romans,  "for  it  is  the  power  of  God 
unto  salvation  to  everyone  that  believeth";  and 

13 


14  Function  of  the  Church 

from  that  day  to  our  own,  Christianity  has  always 
been  regarded  as  this  "power  of  God  unto  salva- 
tion," and  the  church  as  the  instrument  of  this 
power ! 

This  conception  of  the  function  of  the  church,  as 
concerned  with  the  individual  and  the  problem 
of  his  moral  and  spiritual  salvation,  has  its  foun- 
dation in  that  which  is  distinctive  of  Christianity 
among  all  the  great  religions  of  the  world — namely, 
its  reverence  for  human  nature,  its  faith  in  the  per- 
fect dignity  and  eternal  worth  of  the  human  soul 
per  se.  That  this  is  a  unique  feature  of  the  Chris- 
tian religion  has  of  course  been  very  frequently  dis- 
puted; but  it  would  seem  that  the  great  weight  of 
critical  and  prophetic  opinion  was  overwhelmingly 
in  its  favour.  Thus,  it  is  William  Ellery  Channing 
who  says,  that  "he  who  has  never  looked  through 
men's  outward  condition  to  the  naked  soul  and 
there  seen  God's  image  commanding  reverence, 
is  a  stranger  to  the  distinctive  love  of  Christi- 
anity." Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  in  his  famous 
Divinity  School  Address,  declares  that  true  Christi- 
anity means  "a  faith  like  Christ's  in  the  infini- 
tude of  man  " ;  and,  in  paying  tribute  to  the  prophet 
of  Nazareth,  he  asserts  that  "alone  in  all  history 
he  estimated  the  greatness  of  man."  Hegel,  the 
German  idealist,  says  that  in  Christianity  "the 
individual  has  an  infinite  worth,  as  being  the  aim 
and  object  of  God's  love."  James  Martineau,  in 
England,  voices  a  similar  opinion,  when  he  de- 
clares that  "the  true  meaning  of  the  Christian 


Individualism  15 

faith"  lies'in  its  "reverential  estimate  of  the  hu- 
man soul" — its  "sense  of  the  infinite  worth  there 
is  in  man."  Dr.  Hatch,  in  his  Hibbert  Lectures, 
confirms  these  statements,  when  he  refers  to  "the 
Christian  doctrine  of  the  inestimable  value  of  each 
immortal  soul"  as  the  "distinguishing  and  tran- 
scendent characteristic  of  every  society  into  which 
the  spirit  of  Christianity  has  passed."  And  Prof. 
G.  B.  Foster,  in  his  "Finality  of  the  Christian 
Religion,"  adds  the  influence  of  his  scholarly  word 
in  the  assertion  that  "faith  in  the  infinite  worth 
of  the  human  personality  in  the  sight  of  God — if 
there  was  anything  new  in  the  thought  of  Jesus, 
it  was  this ! "  ^  Here  are  only  a  few  of  the  witnesses 
who  might  be  cited  in  support  of  this  assertion 
that  faith  in  the  eternal  and  infinite  worth  of  the 
human  soul — in  other  words,  reverence  for  the 
individual — is  the  one  absolutely  distinctive  feat- 
ure of  Christianity.  This  was  the  one  original 
thought  perhaps  which  Jesus  contributed  to  the 
world;  it  was  the  secret  of  the  power  which  was 
behind  his  heroic  life  and  those  of  his  disciples; 
and  it  is  the  one  great  principle  which  has  animated 
the  Christian  church  from  the  beginning  even  until 
now. 

It  cannot  be  too  plainly  indicated  at  the  very 
start,  therefore,  that  Christianity,  in  origin  and 
essence,  is  the  supreme  religion  of  individualism, 

'  I  am  indebted  for  this  admirable  series  of  quotations  to  Rev. 
Charles  A.  Allen,  of  Waverley,  Mass.  See  his  article  in  the 
"Harvard  Theological  Review,"  April,  191 1,  Page  266. 


i6  Function  of  the  Church 

as  Jesus  was  the  supreme  prophet  of  individualism. 
Starting  with  the  Nazarene's  subHme  conception 
of  the  infinite  and  eternal  worth  of  the  individual 
soul,  which  constitutes  in  many  ways  the  whole 
sum  and  substance  of  his  message,  Christianity 
has  ever  been  inspired  with  reverence  of  that  soul, 
and  concerned  with  the  practical  problem  of  its 
salvation.  To  describe  the  teaching  of  Jesus  and 
the  gospel  of  Christianity  in  other  terms  than  this 
of  the  absolute  and  everlasting  worth  of  every 
man  and  woman  born  into  the  world  and  the 
immediate  necessity  of  their  salvation,  would  be 
an  utterly  groundless  and  therefore  inexcusable 
misinterpretation  of  history.  It  is  from  this  point 
of  view  that  Christianity  is  primarily  to  be  distin- 
guished from  ancient  paganism  upon  the  one  hand 
and  from  both  ancient  and  modern  orientalism 
upon  the  other.  If  there  is  anything  which  was 
pre-eminently  characteristic  of  the  civilisations  of 
Greece  and  Rome  it  was  the  emphasis  which  was 
always  placed  upon  the  importance  of  the  state  as 
compared  with  the  importance  of  the  individual 
citizen.  The  practical  philosophy  of  Greek  Plato- 
nism,  as  exemplified  by  the  "Republic,"  was  at  one 
with  the  practical  philosophy  of  Roman  Stoicism, 
as  exemplified  by  Seneca  and  Aurelius,  in  its  inter- 
pretation of  life  in  terms  of  a  social  solidarity  in 
which  the  individual  played  little  or  no  part.  It 
is  common  in  these  days  to  refer  to  the  extreme 
individualistic  tendencies  of  a  Nietzsche  or  a 
Bernard  Shaw,  as  seen  in  the  doctrine  of  the  Super- 


Individualism  17 

man,  as  a  recrudescence  of  paganism';  and  yet,  in"" 
many  ways,  such  an  extravagant  exaltation  of  the 
rights  and  privileges  of  the  individual  is  wholly 
foreign  to  anything  ever  known  to  the  ancient 
world.  And  an  even  more  complete  submerging 
of  the  individual  is  seen  in  the  mystic  philosophies 
of  the  oriental  world,  which  find  their  fruitage  in 
the  Buddhist  doctrine  of  Nirvana.  Emphasis  upon 
the  dignity  and  worth  of  the  individual  as  an  indi- 
vidual is  peculiar  to  our  western  and  more  modem 
civilisation;  and  that  it  is  so  peculiar,  is  because 
this  civilisation  is  very  largely  the  product  of  the 
religion  which  had  its  origin  in  the  person  of  Jesus 
of  Nazareth. 

The  distinctive  feature  of  Christian  thought, 
therefore,  is  its  exaltation  of  the  individual.  And 
this  being  the  case,  it  is  of  course  inevitable  that 
the  distinctive  work  of  the  church  should  assume 
the  form  of  seeking  the  salvation  of  this  individual. 
''The  special  work  which  awaited  Christianity," 
says  Dr.  Matheson,  in  his  "Spirit  of  Christianity," 
"was  the  transfusion  into  the  mind  of  the  world  of 
its  own  distinctive  principle  of  the  value  of  the 
human  soul . "  To  save  the  individual ,  whose  worth 
was  thus  beyond  all  earthly  computation, — to 
educate  him  if  ignorant,  to  uplift  him  if  degraded, 
to  civilise  him  if  barbarous,  to  moralise  him  if  sin- 
ful, to  redeem  him  if  lost — this  has  been  the  work  of 
the  church  from  the  day  when  Jesus  was  first  called 
Saviour  down  even  to  the  present  moment.  Nor 
can  I  conceive  of  the  time  ever  coming  when  the 


1 8  Function  of  the  Church 

church  shall  find  it  necessary  to  alter  its  purpose  or 
change  the  direction  of  its  practical  activities. 
With  the  weak,  tempted,  imperfect  individual,  the 
work  of  the  church  must  begin;  and  beyond  this 
weak,  tempted,  and  imperfect  individual,  I  cannot 
see  that  this  saving  work  can  ever  go.  When  the 
church  has  said  to  the  great  host  of  individual  men 
and  women,  "Be  ye  perfect,  even  as  your  Father 
which  is  in  heaven  is  perfect,"  it  has  spoken  the 
last  and  highest  word  both  of  ethics  and  religion. 

(b)  the  methods  of  salvation 

It  is  perfectly  evident,  however,  from  the  most 
casual  reading  of  religious  history,  that  while  the 
work  of  the  church  has  always  been  that  of  indi- 
vidual salvation,  this  work  has  never  been  regarded 
in  the  same  way  in  all  ages  and  by  all  branches  of 
the  organisation.  On  the  contrary,  salvation  as 
the  end  to  be  achieved  has  been  very  differently 
apprehended,  and  the  means  of  salvation  very 
differently  defined.  Numerous  as  these  differences 
are,  however,  we  may  classify  them  roughly  under 
the  three  great  historic  heads  of  Catholicism,  Pro- 
testantism, and  modem  Liberalism. 

(i)  Catholicism 

To  the  Catholic,  salvation  has  always  meant 
membership  within  the  one  true  church,  reception 
of  the  sacraments,  and,  in  its  perfect  form,  with- 
drawal from  the  world  of  every-day  affairs.    At 


Individualism  i9 

the  hour  of  birth  the  CathoHc  receives  the  sacra- 
ment of  Baptism;  throughout  all  the  years  of  his 
life  he  partakes  regularly  of  the  sacrament  of  the 
Lord's  Supper;  upon  his  death-bed,  before  con- 
sciousness has  wholly  flown,  he  is  given  the  sacra- 
ment of  the  Last  Unction;  and  it  is  by  means  of 
these  sacraments  that  his  position  within  the 
church  is  maintained  and  his  salvation  secured. 
The  person,  however,  who  would  win  salvation  in 
the  most  direct  and  certain  way,  retires  wholly 
from  the  society  of  his  fellows  and  enters  a  monas- 
tery or  a  convent ;  and  therefore  is  it  that  in  these 
sects  of  monks  and  nuns  we  find  the  perfect  expres- 
sion of  the  Catholic  idea  of  individual  salvation. 
In  the  Middle  Ages,  when  the  Roman  church  was 
the  most  powerful  institution  in  the  world,  monas- 
teries and  convents  were  scattered  all  over  the  face 
of  Europe.  Upon  every  highway  were  to  be  seen 
the  Dominicans  and  Franciscans;  at  every  cross- 
roads and  in  every  forest  glen  was  to  be  found  the 
solitary  cell  of  some  devout  hermit,  who  was 
reverenced  by  all  who  saw  him  as  a  holy  man ;  and 
in  every  royal  court  were  the  high  dignitaries  of 
these  sacred  orders.  Even  now,  in  most  of  our 
great  cities,  are  to  be  seen  the  quiet  sisterhoods  and 
brotherhoods,  which  are  the  strange  survival  of 
the  enormous  medieval  societies.  And  all  of  these 
monks  and  nuns,  to-day  as  in  former  times,  are 
held  in  especial  esteem,  because,  according  to  the 
Catholic  idea,  they  are  the  saved — those  who  have 
put  away  the  world  and  entered  upon  complete 


20  Function  of  the  Church 

and  perfect  fellowship  with  God  right  here  and 
now  upon  the  earth. 

(2)  Protestantism 

The  Protestant  idea  of  course  is  very  different 
from  this  and  marks  a  long  step  in  advance. 
According  to  the  great  teachers  of  Protestantism, 
salvation  is  to  be  won  not  by  such  outward 
"works"  as  participating  in  the  sacraments  or 
joining  the  membership  of  the  holy  orders,  but 
by  inward  "faith."  It  is  a  matter  not  of  the  hands 
but  of  the  heart,  not  of  outward  performance  but 
of  inward  attitude,  not  of  the  offices  of  the  church 
but  of  the  grace  of  God  himself.  According  to  this 
conception,  the  person  who  is  to  be  saved  must 
undergo  that  mighty  spiritual  experience  of  repent- 
ance and  regeneration  which  is  called  "conver- 
sion." He  must  realise  that  he  himself  cannot 
achieve  salvation  by  his  own  unaided  efforts;  he 
must  understand  that  "mere  morality"  is  in  itself 
nothing;  he  must  recognise  that  his  sin  must  have 
atonement,  and  that  nothing  less  than  the  atone- 
ment offered  by  the  sacrifice  of  Christ  is  adequate. 
He  must  turn  therefore  to  Jesus;  he  must  recog- 
nise the  Nazarene  as  his  Lord  and  Saviour;  he 
must  open  his  heart  freely  to  the  inpouring  of  the 
divine  grace;  he  must  so  completely  surrender  his 
own  ideas  and  aims  and  purposes,  that  he  can  be 
wholly  possessed  by  the  Holy  Spirit;  he  must 
empty  himself  utterly  that  God  may  enter  into 


Individualism  21 

his  soul  and  there  achieve  his  perfect  work  of 
regeneration  and  sanctification.  It  is  when  this 
work  has  been  successfully  achieved  that  the 
individual  is  said  to  be  saved  by  "faith";  and  it  is 
the  doing  of  this  work  which  is  called  "conver- 
sion." Just  as  the  monastery  or  the  convent  is 
the  typical  expression  of  Catholic  salvation,  so 
may  the  revival  meeting  with  its  mourners'  bench 
be  taken  as  the  typical  expression  of  Protestant 
salvation.  Here  in  these  great  evangelistic  cam- 
paigns which  have  swept  the  Christian  world  at 
periodic  intervals,  under  the  leadership  of  such 
men  as  Wesley  and  Whitefield,  Moody  and  Finney, 
do  we  have  the  Protestant  conception  of  salvation 
carried  to  its  logical  conclusion  and  appearing 
in  its  most  characteristic  form  of  expression. 

In  many  ways  these  two  interpretations  of  the 
work  of  the  church  are  very  different,  and  the  Pro- 
testant marks  a  great  advance  over  the  Catholic; 
but  it  is  to  be  noted  that  fundamentally  they  are 
the  same.  The  Catholic  and  the  Protestant  have 
different  ideas  as  to  how  salvation  is  to  be  secured; 
they  have  different  conceptions  of  the  evil  from 
which  this  salvation  is  necessary;  they  are  as  far 
apart  in  practical  ideals  as  the  Roman  monastery 
and  the  New  England  revival  meeting;  but  they 
nevertheless  start  from  exactly  the  same  point — 
the  essential  depravity  of  human  nature ;  and  they 
move  to  exactly  the  same  end — the  miraculous 
redemption  of  human  nature.  Here  before  them 
they  see  a  lost  soul— a  soul  that  is  doomed  to 


22  Function  of  the  Church 

eternal  punishment  because  of  the  sin  of  its  inherit- 
ance— and  they  understand  their  task  to  be  that 
of  saving  this  soiil  from  the  doom  prepared  for  it 
by  the  justice  of  God  in  the  world  to  come.  And 
it  is  just  here,  in  the  depraved  condition  of  the  soul 
which  is  to  be  saved  and  the  abnormal  methods 
which  are  to  be  used  in  accomplishing  this  work 
of  salvation,  that  we  find  the  starting-point  of 
the  opposition  of  the  so-called  Liberal  Christian 
movement. 

(3)  Liberalism 

It  was  about  one  hundred  years  ago  or  so  that 
there  came  in  all  parts  of  the  Christian  world  this 
great  Liberal  movement  in  theology,  which  has 
found  its  most  logical  expression  in  American 
Unitarianism,  and  which  is  remarkable,  as  I  have 
said,  in  constituting  an  absolute  break  with  this 
whole  theory  of  salvation  in  both  its  Catholic  and 
Protestant  forms.  This  break  is  caused  by  the 
fact  that  the  Liberal  refuses  to  accept  that  low 
and  repulsive  estimate  of  human  nature  upon 
which  every  orthodox  scheme  of  salvation  has 
been  founded.  The  Liberal  believes  that  history 
and  science  in  all  its  various  branches  unite  in 
demonstrating  that  the  story  of  humanity  is  not 
that  of  a  fall  but  of  a  rise,  and  that  the  character 
of  humanity  is  not  that  of  total  depravity  but  of 
ever-increasing  virtue.  He  starts  out  upon  the 
supposition,  which  he  believes  to  be  supported  by 


Individualism  23 

all  of  the  best  knowledge  of  our  time,  that  human 
nature  is  essentially  good  and  not  bad.  In  each 
and  every  individual  he  finds  that  there  are  present 
the  moral  attributes  of  God.  In  each  he  sees  the 
capacities  of  infinite  affection,  the  possibilities  of 
eternal  progress,  the  qualities  of  honour,  integrity, 
purity,  sympathy,  and  consecration.  Therefore 
to  every  child,  once  described  as  conceived  in  sin 
and  bom  in  iniquity,  does  he  find  it  possible  to  say, 
"Now  art  thou  the  child  of  God,  and  it  doth  not 
yet  appear  what  thou  shalt  be ;  but  we  know  that 
when  it  doth  appear  thou  shalt  be  like  unto  him." 
This  being  the  estimate  which  the  Liberal  places 
upon  the  essential  character  of  human  nature,  it 
becomes  evident  that  he  conceives  the  work  of 
organised  religion  to  be  very  different  from  that 
described  by  either  the  Catholic  or  the  Protestant. 
Affirming  without  reservation  that  all  men,  as  the 
children  of  God,  are  naturally  good  and  not  bad, 
and  have  no  task  in  life  other  than  that  of  making 
themselves  what  they  can  and  really  ought  to  be, 
he  believes  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  this  work 
of  salvation,  in  the  old  sense  of  the  term,  to  be  done 
at  all — that  the  individual  needs  not  to  be  saved 
but  to  be  nurtured,  not  to  be  redeemed  but  to  be 
educated,  not  to  be  supematurally  converted  but 
to  be  naturally  developed.  The  problem  of  human 
life  is  not  that  of  banishing  from  our  souls  an  essen- 
tially evil  nature,  and  by  some  strange  miraculous 
process  obtaining  in  its  place  a  wholly  new  nature 
of   which   the   rudiments   were   never   possessed 


24  Function  of  the  Church 

before;  but  it  is  the  problem  of  taking  the  nattire 
which  we  have  to  start  with,  and  which  is  divine 
in  all  of  its  essential  attributes,  and  developing 
it  to  the  perfect  fulfilment  of  all  the  latent  possi- 
bilities of  its  being.  The  Liberal's  life-problem,  as 
he  sees  it,  is  not  that  of  miraculously  undergoing 
a  second  birth,  but  of  working  out  successfully, 
by  a  wholly  natural  process  of  education,  all  the 
promise  that  was  contained  in  his  first  birth.  His 
problem  is  not  that  of  undergoing  any  sudden 
change  or  conversion  or  transformation,  but  that 
of  developing  naturally  all  the  divine  powers  that 
are  latent  within  him  as  a  human  being.  His  pro- 
blem, in  other  words,  is  not  that  of  salvation,  in 
the  old  sense  of  the  term,  but  that  of  nurture,  edu- 
cation, cultivation.  He  needs  simply  to  grow  and 
expand  along  normal  and  healthful  lines.  His 
task  is  simply  to  fulfil  the  best  that  is  within  him ; 
to  climb  slowly  but  surely  to  the  highest  that  is 
within  human  reach;  to  rise  up  and  up,  by  the 
natural  process  of  development,  out  of  the  de- 
grading things  of  earth  to  "the  mark  of  the  high 
calling  of  God"  which  is  in  the  soul  of  every  man 
born  into  the  world.  There  is  no  such  thing  then, 
literally  speaking,  as  salvation;  and  yet  the  old 
word  still  has  its  meaning !  Salvation,  we  may  say, 
is  still  necessary,  but  in  a  new  and  better  sense. 
We  need  to  be  saved,  not  in  the  sense  that  we  are 
already  lost,  but  in  the  sense  that  we  may  be  lost 
through  neglect,  exposure,  weakness,  or  unfaithful- 
ness.  To  be  lost,  is  to  be  imperfect  and  incomplete, 


Individualism  25 

to  be  stunted  and  undeveloped,  to  fall  short  by 
however  so  little  of  the  divine  possibilities  that 
are  within  us ;  and  to  be  saved  is  to  escape  from  the 
imperfect  and  the  incomplete,  and  to  rise  to  the 
fulness  of  the  stature  of  our  innate  spiritual  man- 
hood. To  be  saved  is  to  grow — to  grow  steadily 
and  in  accordance  with  the  laws  of  God — to  grow 
naturally  from  childhood  to  maturity,  from  ma- 
turity to  old  age,  without  fears  or  forebodings, 
without  moral  questionings  or  spiritual  convul- 
sions, even  as  the  seed  grows  naturally  from  leaf 
to  flower  and  from  flower  to  ripened  fruit.  To 
be  saved  is  simply  to  be  what  we  can  and  ought  to 
be — to  redeem  the  measure  of  our  promise — to  be 
morally  and  spiritually  whole — to  have  character ! 
Hence  the  Liberal  doctrine  of  salvation  by  charac- 
ter, as  contrasted  with  the  Catholic  doctrine  of 
salvation  by  works  and  the  Protestant  doctrine  of 
salvation  by  faith! 

(C)   THE    COMMON   CONCEPTION    OF    INDIVIDUALISM 
UNDERLYING  THESE  METHODS 

Here  now  are  the  various  conceptions  which 
have  been  held,  in  various  periods  of  Christian 
history,  of  the  work  of  organised  religion.  These 
conceptions  are  very  different,  as  we  have  seen, 
and  mark  a  distinct  line  of  progress  in  their  de- 
velopment from  one  to  another.  The  advance  from 
the  Catholic  conception  of  outward  conformity  to 
the  practices  of  an  ecclesiastical  hierarchy  to  the 


26  Function  of  the  Church 

Protestant  conception  of  the  inward  experience 
of  conversion  constituted  a  veritable  revolution 
in  religious  standards  and  ideals ;  but  not  more  so 
than  the  advance  from  the  Protestant  conception 
of  the  miraculous  transformation  of  the  soul  through 
spiritual  faith  to  the  Liberal  conception  of  the  na- 
tural development  of  the  soul  through  moral  edu- 
cation. But  these  differences  in  the  theories  of 
applied  religion  are  by  no  means  so  impressive,  to 
my  mind,  as  the  fact  that  these  conceptions  are  all 
founded  upon  one  uniform  interpretation  of  human 
life,  and  therefore,  in  the  last  analysis,  are  the  same. 
It  would  seem,  at  first  glance,  that  nothing  coiild 
be  farther  apart  than  the  Catholic  emphasis  upon 
works,  the  Protestant  emphasis  upon  faith,  and 
the  Liberal  emphasis  upon  development ;  and  that 
nothing  could  serve  to  close  the  chasm  between 
the  orthodox  conception  of  total  depravity  and  the 
Liberal  conception  of  the  essential  worth  of  human 
nature.  And  yet,  whether  it  is  the  Catholic  cele- 
brating the  mass,  or  the  Protestant  evangelising 
an  indifferent  community,  or  the  Unitarian  plant- 
ing his  schools  and  colleges,  they  are  all  at  one  in 
their  attitude  toward  the  individual  whose  life, 
in  their  several  ways,  they  are  striving  to  redeem. 
Always  has  the  church,  in  all  of  its  branches  from 
the  medieval  Roman  hierarchy  to  the  twentieth- 
century  Ethical  Culture  Society,  looked  out  upon 
the  world  of  men  and  seen  not  an  organised  society 
but  a  haphazard  conglomeration  of  separated 
individuals,  each  individual  having  a  certain  re- 


Individualism  27 

lation  to  his  fellows  and  to  the  world  at  large,  but  a 
relation  that  was  purely  occasional  and  therefore 
devoid  of  any  permanent  significance. 

In  the  eyes  of  the  Catholic  and  the  Protestant 
churches  alike,  each  individual  has  always  stood  as 
a  wholly  isolated  entity,  having  no  vital  connection 
with  anything  that  has  gone  before  or  anything  that 
now  is,  and  presenting  a  moral  problem  identical 
with  that  presented  by  every  other  individual. 
Here,  in  a  word,  is  a  human  soul  bom  into  the 
world  in  that  condition  of  sin  which  is  imiversally 
characteristic  of  mankind,  and  thus  in  crying  need 
of  salvation.  Its  condition  is  exactly  that  of  every 
other  living  soul,  and  the  problem  of  its  redemp- 
tion is  therefore  the  same.  The  external  con- 
ditions of  life  are  mere  accidents  and  therefore 
do  not  affect  the  problem  in  the  slightest  degree. 
The  individual  may  be  black  or  white,  rich  or 
poor,  ignorant  or  educated, — he  may  be  bom  in 
affluence  or  want,  of  tainted  or  pure  blood,  in  the 
tenement  or  in  the  palace — still  the  problem  of 
his  redemption  is  in  all  cases  the  same.  Men  and 
women,  that  is,  are  all  equal  in  the  sight  of  God. 
Regardless  of  the  chance  circumstances  of  earthly 
life,  they  are  all  doomed  by  the  same  curse  of 
inherited  sin,  all  free  to  seek  God's  forgiveness 
and  grace  by  accepting  the  sacrifice  of  Christ  and 
thus  win  salvation,  and  all  responsible  for  their 
ultimate  fate.  From  this  point  of  view,  the  pro- 
blem of  redemption  is  one  centring  wholly  about 
the  individual  as  such.    It  is  the  problem  of  con- 


28  Function  of  the  Church 

vincing  the  individual  personally  of  his  state  of 
sin,  warning  him  of  his  impending  doom,  instruct- 
ing him  of  his  opportunity  of  salvation,  and  con- 
verting him  to  the  acceptance  of  that  opportunity. 
The  external  circumstances  of  life,  constituting 
the  environment  in  which  the  soul  is  placed,  do 
not  enter  into  the  matter  at  all.  It  is  the  soul 
alone  that  counts;  and  that  soul  can  be  redeemed 
by  the  same  methods,  whether  it  be  the  soul  of 
the  rich  merchant  or  the  starving  "bum,"  the 
society  matron  or  the  street-walker,  the  trained 
college  student  or  the  barbaric  and  bloodthirsty 
Indian  chief,  Geronimo,  who  died,  it  is  said,  a 
good  member  of  the  church! 

Exactly  the  same  conception  of  the  individual 
has  been  characteristic  of  modem  Liberalism. 
The  individual,  to  be  sure,  in  his  essential  nature, 
has  been  regarded  from  a  very  different  point  of 
view;  and  the  problem  of  his  redemption,  as  we 
have  seen,  has  been  treated  in  a  very  different  way. 
But  as  regards  the  individual  in  his  relation  to 
society  and  to  the  world  of  nature,  the  Liberal 
church  has  been  at  one  with  the  Catholic  and  the 
Protestant  churches  in  asserting  an  almost  complete 
absence  of  that  relationship.  To  the  former  as  to 
the  latter,  inheritance  has  counted  for  little,  and 
environment  for  still  less;  and  as  for  the  fact  of 
economic  status,  it  has  not  been  recognised  at  all. 
In  other  words.  Liberalism  is  at  one  with  Catholic- 
ism and  Protestantism  in  seeing  in  each  individual 
nothing  but  an  isolated  personal  entity,  having 


Individualism  29 

little  or  no  vital  connection  with  anything  or  any- 
body external  to  itself.  No  better  statement  of 
this  conception  of  the  individual  has  ever  been 
given  than  by  Prof.  Ephraim  Emerton,  in  his 
recent  book  on  "Unitarian  Thought."  Describing 
the  doctrine  of  redemption  as  held  by  this  extreme 
left  wing  of  modem  Liberalism,  he  says: 

Unitarianism  fixes  its  attention  primarily  upon 
the  individual.  It  does  not  conceive  of  man  merely 
as  an  accident  in  the  world-mechanism.  It  knows 
that  he  is  that,  but  it  thinks  of  him  as  related  to  the 
world  process  through  the  working  of  his  own  indi- 
viduality. It  has  its  own  lofty  conceptions  of  the 
function  of  the  family,  the  state,  the  church,  mankind 
even,  in  bringing  about  that  development  which  is  to 
it  the  ultimate  goal  of  humanity.  It  feels  the  force 
of  the  reaction  of  all  these  upon  the  individual  in 
fixing  his  aims,  setting  his  limitations,  giving  him  his 
opportunities ;  but  still  more  powerfully  it  feels  that 
these  larger  entities  have  meaning  and  value  only  as 
they  are  fixed  by  the  character  of  the  individuals  who 
compose  them. 

The  individual,  in  other  words,  is  a  ding  an  sich; 
and  he  is  related  to  the  material  environment  and 
the  social  organism  only  as  he,  by  his  personal 
initiative,  can  mould  and  change  them.  The 
world  is  in  the  individual,  if  I  may  so  put  it  in  the 
classic  phrase  of  the  idealists,  and  not  the  indi- 
vidual in  the  world! 

Whatever  their  differences  in  practical  method, 


30  Function  of  the  Church 

therefore,  Catholic,  Protestant,  and  Liberal  all 
unite  in  their  conception  of  the  individual  and  his 
relation  to  the  world.  And  this  conception,  as  I 
need  not  emphasise,  works  out,  in  its  practical  con- 
sequences, into  the  crassest  kind  of  individualism. 
The  orthodox  church,  in  all  of  its  many  branches 
both  Catholic  and  Protestant,  has  thrown  the  indi- 
vidual back  upon  himself  and  focussed  his  religious 
attention  upon  the  problem  of  his  own  eternal 
welfare.  It  has  taught  him  to  study  the  state  of 
his  own  soul — to  survey  his  sins  and  weaknesses 
— to  save  himself,  even  though  all  the  rest  of 
human  kind  remain  unrepentant  and  unforgiven. 
"What  shall  I  do  to  be  saved?" — is  the  hopelessly 
individualistic  question  which  has  controlled  the 
lives  of  countless  generations  of  men  in  the  past, 
and  which  the  church  in  all  ages  has  made  it  its 
express  business  to  interpret.  "Religion,"  says 
Prof.  Francis  G.  Peabody,  describing  this  charac- 
teristic aspect  of  Christianity  in  his  "Approach 
to  the  Social  Question,"  "was  a  gift  to  the  indi- 
vidual, and  the  salvation  of  the  single  individual 
was  the  sufficient  end  of  God's  grace.  '  The  most 
vivid  picture  of  this  strictly  individualistic  con- 
ception ever  given  to  the  world  is  that  portrayed 
by  John  Bunyan  in  the  pages  of  his  "Pilgrim's 
Progress."  Warned  by  the  angel  of  the  Lord  that 
he  is  living  in  the  City  of  Destruction,  Christian 
straightway  abandons  his  family  and  friends,  and 
flees  with  all  speed  from  the  doomed  community  in 
order  to  save  himself.     And  when  his  wife  and 


Individualism  31 

children  call  to  him  to  come  back  and  deliver  them 
also,  he  puts  his  fingers  in  his  ears  and  runs  the 
faster,  says  the  pious  writer,  that  he  may  not  be 
persuaded  by  earthly  compassion  to  turn  back  and 
thus  forfeit  his  chance  of  salvation.  And  this 
insanely  selfish  man  Bunyan  made  the  hero  of  his 
tale  and  thus  the  model  of  Christian  virtue!  Of 
course,  Christianity  has  never  at  any  time  been 
devoid  of  altruistic  elements.  The  pages  of  both 
Catholic  and  Protestant  history  are  crowded  with 
the  stories  of  noble  men  and  pure  women  who 
lived  and  died  "for  others'  sakes";  and  the  cru- 
sades of  the  Middle  Ages  and  the  great  foreign 
missionary  enterprises  of  more  modern  times  are 
inspiring  examples  of  vast  movements  of  organised 
consecration.  But  the  altruism  is  not  the  essential 
feature  of  the  doctrine.  At  the  bottom  of  it  all  is 
the  challenge  of  personal  salvation;  and  it  is  only 
when  I  myself  have  been  saved — or  perhaps  as  a 
help  to  my  attainment  of  salvation — that  I  am 
permitted  to  launch  out  and  save  others  who  are 
lost! 

This  same  individualism  is  also  characteristic,  as 
we  might  expect,  of  modem  Liberalism.  The 
Liberals,  to  be  sure,  have  always  taken  great  com- 
fort in  the  thought  that  they  have  wholly  emanci- 
pated themselves  from  all  the  traditional  schemes 
of  salvation,  both  Catholic  and  Protestant;  and 
denounce,  with  much  show  of  indignation,  the 
familiar  question,  "What  shall  I  do  to  be  saved?" 
But  when  all  has  been  said  and  done,  it  is  as  plain 


32  Function  of  the  Church 

as  noon-day  to  the  impartial  observer,  that  this 
boasted  freedom  is  more  a  matter  of  "words — 
words,"  as  Hamlet  says,  than  anything  else;  and 
that  the  religious  philosophy  of  modern  Liberalism, 
whether  it  be  that  of  the  Unitarian  or  the  Ethical 
Culturist,  the  Christian  Scientist  or  the  New 
Thoughtist,  is  identical,  in  its  fundamental  aspects, 
with  that  of  historic  Christianity.  The  methods 
which  the  Liberal  employs  in  his  work  of  salvation, 
to  be  sure,  are  as  far  separated  from  the  methods 
employed  by  the  Catholic  and  the  Protestant  as 
the  two  poles  from  one  another.  In  place  of  sal- 
vation by  faith,  he  puts  salvation  by  character; 
in  place  of  salvation  by  the  grace  of  Christ,  he 
puts  salvation  by  one's  own  achievement ;  in  place 
of  salvation  gained  by  the  miraculous  intervention 
of  a  divine  being,  he  puts  the  salvation  gained  by 
the  natural  endeavours  of  his  own  soul.  But  the 
matter  of  methods  is  comparatively  unimportant. 
The  essential  question  is.  What  is  the  church  really 
trying  to  do?  And  in  the  one  case,  as  in  the  other, 
the  answer  comes  back  in  unmistakable  terms, — ■ 
It  is  trying  to  save  the  individual  in  and  for  him- 
self! When  words  are  cast  aside,  that  is,  and  the 
realities  which  they  typify  are  examined,  we  find 
that  the  Liberal  has  simply  been  using  white  coun- 
ters instead  of  black.  The  game  which  he  is  play- 
ing is  exactly  the  same  game,  and  is  controlled 
therefore  by  exactly  the  same  rules.  Liberalism, 
like  all  kinds  of  orthodoxy,  in  other  words,  is  neces- 
sarily individualistic  at  the  core.     The  church  in 


Individualism  33 

both  cases  is  concerned  with  saving  the  individual 
as  an  individual.  The  Liberal,  whether  he  admits 
it  or  not,  feels  himself  confronted  primarily  by  the 
problem  of  saving  his  personal  soul.  His  sign  of 
salvation  is  a  pure  heart — that  of  the  Catholic  is  the 
sacrament  and  that  of  the  Protestant,  conversion; 
his  method  of  salvation  is  natural,  their  method 
supernatural;  his  road  of  salvation  is  moral,  their 
road  statutory;  he  does  something,  they  receive 
something.  But  the  end  is  in  all  cases  the  same! 
Even  when  the  Liberal's  activities  take  the  altru- 
istic form,  as  they  so  often  do,  of  philanthropy — 
of  charity  to  the  poor,  sympathy  to  the  unfortu- 
nate, service  to  the  helpless,  downtrodden,  and 
oppressed — his  purpose  is  still  very  much  the 
same.  He  is  charitable  and  sympathetic  and  ser- 
viceable primarily  because  he  believes  that  these 
virtues  constitute  character,  and  that  through 
these  virtues  therefore  he  may  acquire  that  char- 
acter which  he  ought  to  have  as  a  decent  man. 
His  concern,  in  other  words,  is  still  primarily  with 
himself!  He  asks,  just  as  the  Christian  in  all  ages 
has  asked,  What  shall  I  do  to  be  saved?  And  the 
fact  that  he  answers  that  question  not  in  terms  of 
sacramental  observances  or  of  conversion  experi- 
ences, but  in  terms  of  that  moral  and  spiritual 
attainment  which  we  call  character  and  which 
often  takes  the  form  of  the  finest  self-sacrifice  and 
devotion,  does  not  alter  the  fundamental  truth, 
that  this  question  is  the  same  as  that  of  his  pre- 
decessors. •  In  other  words.  Liberalism  is  a  religion 
3 


34  Function  of  the  Church 

which,  in  its  practical  operation,  is  essentially 
individualistic.  The  Liberal  seeks  to  save  himself 
by  culture,  education,  and  development  as  an  indi- 
vidual; and  he  seeks  to  save  other  people  in  the 
same  way  as  individuals.  Beyond  this  single  indi- 
vidual and  his  need,  he  does  not  go.  In  Liber- 
alism, that  is,  as  in  all  forms  of  orthodoxy,  religion 
is  still  "a  gift  to  the  individual,  and  the  salvation  of 
the  single  soul  the  sufficient  end  of  God's  grace"! 
The  crowning  illustration  of  the  essentially 
individualistic  character  of  Christianity,  in  all  its 
branches,  is  its  doctrine  of  social  reform,  which  has 
long  since  become  classic  and  therefore  is  backed 
to-day  by  all  the  authority  of  dogma.  It  is  almost 
an  absurdity  to  talk  about  Christianity  and  the 
problem  of  social  reform,  so  remote  and  accidental 
has  been  the  relation  between  the  two  in  all  ages. 
Now  and  again,  however,  the  two  interests  have 
seemed  to  come  together.  But  only  in  rare  and 
accidental  instances  has  the  church  touched  the 
social  question  at  all,  save  through  the  individuals 
who  together  may  be  said  to  make  up  society. 
Society  can  be  saved,  says  the  church,  only  as  the 
individuals  who  compose  it  are  themselves  saved 
one  by  one.  All  attempts  at  changing  conditions 
and  reconstructing  social  arrangements  by  legis- 
lative enactment  are  futile,  so  long  as  men  and 
women  remain  the  same  weak  and  vicious  indi- 
viduals that  they  have  always  been.  Nothing  can 
be  done  for  society  excepting  as  something  is  done 
for  the  persons  of  all  classes  and  conditions  who 


Individualism  35 

make  up  the  social  aggregate.  Change  these  and 
society  will  change ;  and  when  all  men  and  women, 
as  individual  personalities,  have  been  so  changed, 
the  Kingdom  of  God  will  be  established  upon  the 
earth — and  not  before!  Prof.  Emerton's  recent 
book  on  "Unitarian  Thought"  gives  expression  to 
this  classic  doctrine  of  individualism  as  it  appears 
in  its  most  extreme  form  in  modem  Liberalism. 

The  redemption  of  the  race  [he  says]  comes  only 
through  the  redemption  of  individuals,  and  that 
comes  only  through  the  redeeming  force  of  personal 
character.  .  .  .  Every  man  at  once  contributes  to 
and  shares  in  the  race  redemption  when  he,  in  his 
own  personal  conflict,  comes  out  victorious.  .  .  . 
Redemption  by  character,  first  of  the  individual,  and 
then,  through  the  natural  groupings  of  individuals, 
of  society  as  a  whole;  this  is  the  ideal  that  to  the 
Unitarian  embodies  the  most  elevating,  the  most 
stimulating,  and  the  most  rewarding  of  human 
conceptions. 

Here,  as  is  obvious  enough,  is  the  Christian 
philosophy  of  individualism  in  its  perfect  fulfil- 
ment. What  wonder  that  the  disciple  of  this 
philosophy,  whether  Catholic  or  Protestant  or 
Liberal,  has  found  it  difficult  to  get  beyond  the 
question  of  his  own  individual  salvation! — and 
that  we  see  in  all  orthodoxies  that  typical  product 
of  its  decadence,  the  canting  "saint,"  who  is  none 
other  than  brother  to  that  similar  product  of 
decadent  Liberalism,  the  self-righteous  Pharisee! 


CHAPTER  III 

WHAT  IS  AN  INDIVIDUAL  ? 

IT  is  just  here,  in  this  conception  of  the  isolated 
individual  which  gives  a  uniformity  to  the  prac- 
tical work  of  the  church  amid  all  of  its  diversity  of 
method,  that  we  find  that  necessity  for  a  revolu- 
tionary transformation  of  function  which  consti- 
tutes the  supreme  religious  problem  of  our  time. 
For  we  are  face  to  face  to-day  with  a  wholly  new 
conception  of  the  significance  of  the  individual 
and  the  character  of  the  life  which  he  has  to  live. 
It  is  this  fact,  as  I  need  not  point  out,  which  is 
making  our  age  to  be  one  of  strange  transition  and 
disorder,  which  is  shaking  the  whole  structure  of 
our  organised  society  to  the  very  foundations, 
and  effecting  that  radical  transformation  of  all 
our  social  institutions,  including  of  course  the 
church,  which  is  the  most  striking  feature  of  mod- 
ern history.  Men  are  asking  to-day,  almost  for 
the  first  time.  What  is  an  individual? — and  they 
are  working  out  an  answer  to  this  question  which 
promises  to  be  revolutionary  in  its  consequences. 
The  answer  to  this  inquiry,  in  other  words,  has 
suddenly  raised  the  social  problem;  and  the  solv- 
ing of  this  problem  is  changing  the  character  of 
the  church  along  with  that  of  every  other  part  of 

36 


What  is  an  Individual  ?  37 

the  social  order.  "New  ideas,"  says  Dr.  Eliot, 
as  we  have  already  seen,  "have  modified  and  ought 
to  modify  not  only  the  work  done  by  the  churches, 
but  the  whole  conception  of  the  function  of  the 
churches" ;  and  these  "new  ideas"  all  centre  about 
this  single  fact  of  our  changing  interpretation  of 
the  essential  nature  of  individuality. 

(a)  the  individual  as  a  social  creature 

In  the  past,  largely  because  of  those  traditional 
influences  of  Christianity  which  we  have  just  been 
discussing  at  some  length,  the  individual  has  been 
thought  of  simply  as  an  individual — as  an  isolated 
personal  entity,  having  no  essential  connection 
with  any  other  individual  nor  with  the  natural 
environment  of  the  world  in  which  he  lived. 
The  individual,  that  is,  has  been  regarded  as  a 
kind  of  spiritual  phenomenon,  existing  wholly 
apart  in  a  vacuum  of  his  own  creating;  and  pre- 
senting a  political  or  industrial  or  educational  or 
religious  problem,  to  be  considered  on  its  own 
particular  merits,  without  any  relation  whatsoever 
to  any  extraneous  circumstances  or  conditions. 
Everywhere  do  we  find  this  tendency  to  "deal 
with  the  individual  as  though  he  were  alone.  .  .  . 
Physiology  examines  the  individual  as  body ;  logic, 
the  individual  as  mind;  ethics,  the  duty  of  the 
individual;  metaphysics,  the  ideals  of  the  indi- 
vidual. All  these  inquiries  seem  to  detach  the 
person  from  the  mass,  as  though  he  occupied  a 


38  Function  of  the  Church 

little  universe  of  his  own."  John  Smith,  from  all 
these  various  points  of  view,  is  John  Smith — an 
individual  man,  and  that  is  all! 

Within  the  last  few  years,  however,  we  have 
gradually  been  awakening  to  the  fact  that  "the 
universe  of  the  isolated  self  is  an  imaginary  uni- 
verse"; that,  strictly  speaking,  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  an  individual  at  all;  that  what  seems  to 
be  an  isolated  personal  entity,  embodying  its  own 
individual  attributes  and  presenting  its  own  indi- 
vidual problems,  is  in  reality  a  social  creature, 
embodying  social  attributes  and  presenting  social 
problems.  John  Smith,  in  other  words,  is  not 
John  Smith  at  aU.  First  of  all,  he  is  the  offspring 
of  a  long  line  of  progenitors ;  the  blood  which  flows 
in  his  veins  is  not  his  blood,  but  that  of  his  ances- 
tors for  generations  back — and  it  makes  all  the 
difference  in  the  world  whether  this  blood  is  of  the 
Jukes  or  the  Edwards  type.  Then  too,  this  same 
John  Smith  is  a  citizen  of  a  certain  country,  reared 
under  the  influence  of  the  customs  and  traditions 
and  legal  regulations  of  that  country ;  and  it  makes 
much  difference  as  regards  the  education  and 
training  of  the  individual  as  to  whether  this  coun- 
try is  Russia  or  England.  Again,  this  man  is  a 
member  of  a  certain  race,  with  a  difference  from 
all  other  races  as  great  in  thought  and  emotion 
as  in  the  color  of  the  skin;  and  the  state  and 
the  church,  as  well  as  the  school  and  the  factory, 
in  their  dealings  with  John  Smith,  are  vitally 
concerned  as  to  whether  he  is  a  member  of  the 


What  is  an  Individual  ?  39 

Mongolian  or  the  Negro  or  the  Caucasian  tribe. 
Furthermore  John  Smith,  in  whatever  country  he 
resides  and  to  whatever  race  he  belongs,  is  living 
from  day  to  day  in  constant  and  intimate  associa- 
tion with  his  fellows;  in  his  home  and  college  and 
church  and  business  influencing  their  society  by 
his  personal  activities,  but  himself  in  turn  much 
more  deeply  and  permanently  influenced  by  their 
society.  In  other  words,  as  we  can  readily  see, 
there  is  in  reality  no  such  thing  as  this  individual 
of  whom  we  have  been  speaking.  John  Smith  is 
a  social  animal,  and  therefore  must  be  considered 
from  the  social  and  not  from  the  individual  point 
of  view.  Physiology  may  study  his  body,  "but 
that  body  is  the  product  of  ages  of  social  history, 
and  becomes  the  symbol  of  the  social  heredity 
and  environment  from  which  it  has  sprung.  .  .  . 
Logic  may  study  his  mind,  but  that  mind  and  its 
order  of  thought  are  the  product  of  centuries  of 
intellectual  development  of  which  the  individual 
mind  is  the  witness  and  expression."  Ethics  may 
study  his  conduct,  but  there  is  no  problem  of  con- 
duct save  as  a  man  is  required  to  live  in  association 
with  his  fellows.  Metaphysics  may  concern  itself 
with  his  personal  ideals,  "but  these  personal  ideals 
are  inextricably  involved  in  the  larger  unity  of  a 
social  idealism,  and  open  into  a  doctrine  not  of  the 
soul  of  the  person  but  of  the  soul  of  the  universe." 
All  the  problems  of  the  individual  are  thus  at 
bottom  social  problems.  "Round  the  problem 
of  the  individual,"   says  Prof.   Francis   G.   Pea- 


40  Function  of  the  Church 

body,  in  his  "Approach  to  the  Social  Question," 
"like  an  ocean  environing  an  island,  there  is  the 
larger  circle  of  social  relations  and  needs." 
There  is  no  such  thing  therefore,  I  say,  as  an 
individual,  for  what  we  call  the  individual  can 
only  be  understood  from  the  standpoint  of  his 
social  relations.  Individuals  exist  not  alone  but 
as  members  of  a  society;  and  it  is  this  member- 
ship in  a  society  which  constitutes  their  reality  as 
individuals.  Therefore  is  Dr.  Cooley  right,  when 
he  says,  in  his  "Human  Nature  and  the  Social 
Order,"  "A  separate  individual  is  an  abstraction 
not  known  to  experience."^ 

I  have  said  that  this  revolutionary  conception 
of  the  social  nature  of  man  is  a  discovery  of  our 
own  time.  In  one  sense  this  is  true ;  but  in  another 
sense,  as  Prof.  Peabody  points  out,  this  conception 
is  as  old  as  human  society  itself.  The  social  ques- 
tion really  appeared  when  a  man  was  born  "not 
alone,  but  into  a  community  of  three — his  parents 
and  himself";  and  it  became  a  question  of  vital 
consequence  just  as  soon  as  men  entered  upon  the 
task  of  Hving  together  in  an  organised  society. 
Nor  was  this  interpretation  of  the  individual  as 
a  social  phenomenon  unknown  to  the  great  think- 
ers of  the  past.  Plato  based  his  greatest  book, 
"The  Republic,"  on  the  fact  of  the  dependence  of 
the  individual  soul  upon  the  material  and  social 
conditions  of  the  environment.     Aristotle,  in  his 

*  Quoted  in  Peabody 's  "Approach  to  the  Social  Question." 


What  is  an  Individual  ?  41 

"Politics,"  affirmed  that  "man  is  by  nature  a 
political  animal."  "The  individual,"  he  said, 
"when  isolated,  is  not  self-sufficing;  and  there- 
fore he  is  like  a  part  in  relation  to  the  whole. 
He  who  lives  not  in  society,  who  has  no  need 
because  he  is  sufficient  for  himself,  must  be 
either  a  beast  or  a  god."'  Indeed,  as  we  have 
already  seen,  the  whole  philosophy  of  ancient 
paganism,  as  contrasted  with  the  Christianity 
which  succeeded  it,  may  be  said  to  have  been  char- 
acterised by  a  sense  of  social  solidarity  which  prac- 
tically disappeared  with  the  passing  of  ancient 
and  the  rising  of  medieval  thought.  Even  in 
Christianity,  however,  with  its  extreme  emphasis 
upon  individualism,  this  conception  of  the  social 
nature  of  man  was  strong  in  the  beginning,  as  a 
reflection  of  the  social  genius  of  the  Hebrew  pro- 
phets. Jesus,  with  his  great  dream  of  the  Kingdom 
and  his  masterly  conception  of  human  brother- 
hood, was  supremely  a  prophet  of  a  social  religion, 
as  we  shall  have  occasion  to  discover  more  par- 
ticularly later  on.  And  I  surely  need  not  point 
out  that  this  was  the  idea  which  Paul  had  in  mind 
when  he  described  his  Christian  comrades  as  one 
body  in  Christ.  '  *  The  body  is  not  one  member  but 
many,"  he  said.  "The  eye  cannot  say  unto  the 
hand,  I  have  no  need  of  thee,  nor  again  the  head 

'Quoted  in  Peabody's  "Approach  to  the  Social  Question." 
See  also:  "  Man  is  truly  a  more  social  animal  than  bees  or  herd- 
ing cattle. — The  state  is  prior  to  the  family  or  the  individual." — 
Aristotle's  "  Politics,"  book  i.,  chapter  2. 


42  Function  of  the  Church 

to  the  feet,  I  have  no  need  of  thee.  For  they  are 
many  members,  but  one  body."^  All  of  which 
means  that  the  individual  is  a  social  creature,  and 
lives  only  as  that  society  lives  of  which  he  is  a  part. 

(b)    modern  emphasis  upon  the  social  nature 

OF  man 

But  while  "this  truth  of  the  social  nature  of 
man,"  as  Prof.  Peabody  points  out  in  his  book, 
''has  never  been  without  its  witnesses,  it  has 
received  such  fresh  momentum  from  the  circum- 
stances of  modern  life  as  to  become  a  practically 
new  force  in  contemporary  thought."  Two  facts 
of  extreme  significance  unite  to  explain  this  sud- 
den recognition  in  our  day  of  the  social  nature  of 
individuality. 

(i)    The  Law  of  Evolution 

In  the  first  place  there  is  the  development 
within  the  last  half -century  of  the  world-shaking 
conception  of  evolution,  which  has  not  only  revo- 
lutionised all  existing  human  knowledge,  but 
created  the  wholly  new  science  of  sociology,  and 
thus  helped  as  much  as  anything  perhaps  to  make 
our  age  peculiarly  the  age  of  the  social  question. 

The  great  contribution  of  Charles  Darwin  to  the 
doctrine  of  evolution  was  his  theory  of  "natural 
selection" — or,  as  Spencer  called  it,  "the  survival 

'  See  Peabody 's  "Approach  to  the  Social  Question  "for  an 
admirable  presentation  of  this  fact. 


What  is  an  Individual  ?  43 

of  the  fittest," — which  for  the  first  time  provided 
an  adequate  explanation  of  the  various  phenomena 
of  development  which  had  for  so  long  been  baffling 
the  biologists  of  the  world.  For  a  time  it  was 
believed  that  this  was  the  sufficient  cause  of  all  the 
phenomena  observed — that  "natural  selection" 
was  the  sole  factor  of  organic  evolution — although 
Darwin  himself  was  careful  to  point  out  that  other 
factors,  such  as  the  Lamarckian  theory  of  the  in- 
heritance of  acquired  characteristics,  no  doubt  had 
a  vital  part  in  the  process.  But  it  was  left  to  Her- 
bert Spencer  to  point  out,  and  I  believe  to  demon- 
strate beyond  all  peradventure  of  a  doubt,  that 
there  was  one  factor  in  the  situation  deeper  and 
more  fundamental  than  natural  selection,  or  any 
other  operating  cause  of  evolution  which  had 
been  mentioned  by  any  of  the  investigators  of  the 
day — namely,  the  factor  of  the  influence  upon  an 
organism  of  its  environment.  In  his  great  essay 
entitled  "The  Factors  of  Organic  Evolution," 
which  Prof.  William  James  has  well  described 
as  "the  greatest  thing"  that  Spencer  ever  did, 
the  philosopher  describes  this  point  as   follows: 

Bodies  of  every  class  and  quality,  inorganic  as 
well  as  organic,  are  from  instant  to  instant  subject  to 
the  influences  in  the  environments — are  from  instant 
to  instant  being  changed  by  these  in  waj^s  that  are 
mostly  inconspicuous;  and  are  in  course  of  time 
changed  by  them  into  conspicuous  ways.  Living 
things  in  common  with  dead  things  are,  I  say,  being 


44  Function  of  the  Church 

thus  perpetually  acted  upon  and  modified;  and  the 
changes  hence  resulting  constitute  an  all-important 
part  of  those  imdergone  in  the  course  of  organic 
evolution. 

Indeed,  he  continues,  it  is  these  "primary  and 
universal  effects,"  achieved  upon  an  organism  by 
the  influence  of  environment,  "which  give  the 
fundamental  characters  to  all  organisms."  In 
order  to  make  this  point  perfectly  clear,  Spencer 
then  cites  a  striking  analogy.  He  describes 
"an  observant  rambler"  along  the  seashore, 
studying  the  stones  which  lie  upon  the  beach. 
He  finds  that  these  stones  are  different  from 
any  that  he  has  ever  discovered  inland,  in  that 
the  waves  of  the  ocean,  advancing  and  receding 
with  the  ebb  and  flow  of  the  tides,  "have  so 
broken  off  their  most  prominent  parts  as  to  pro- 
duce in  all  of  them  more  or  less  rounded  forms; 
and  then,  further,  the  mutual  friction  of  the  stones, 
simiiltaneously  caused,  has  smoothed  their  sur- 
faces." In  other  words,  these  stones  have  been 
made  what  they  are  by  the  peculiar  action  of  their 
environment — they  have  all  undergone  certain 
fundamental  modifications  in  character  as  a  result 
of  the  moulding  influences  of  the  medium  in  which 
they  exist.  The  waters  of  the  sea  have  flowed 
about  these  particular  stones  for  unnumbered  ages, 
rounding  their  edges  and  smoothing  their  siurfaces, 
much  as  a  sculptor  moulds  his  clay ;  and  they  have 
thus  all  of  them  been  fashioned  by  their  environ- 


What  is  an  Individual  ?  45 

ment  into  so  fundamental  and  universal  a  form 
that  a  stone  from  the  sea-shore  can  be  instantly 
distinguished  from  all  others. 

Now  it  is  this  moulding  of  living  organisms  by 
the  external  conditions  of  their  environments,  of 
which  the  action  of  the  ocean  upon  the  pebbles  of 
the  shore  is  a  striking  illustration,  which  Spencer 
declares  lies  at  the  bottom  of  the  whole  process  of 
evolution.  In  this  wonderful  essay  of  which  I  have 
spoken,  he  shows  at  length  how  "the  direct  action 
of  the  medium  (or  environment)  was  the  primor- 
dial factor  of  organic  evolution" — the  one,  that  is, 
with  which  the  evolutionary  process  began ;  and  he 
shows  also  how  the  constant  operation  of  this 
factor,  through  all  the  stages  of  advancing  life, 
has  worked  those  fundamental  changes  in  living 
organisms  which  have  made  possible  the  more  con- 
spicuous and  immediate  and  specific  changes  which 
have  been  achieved  by  natural  selection  and  hered- 
ity and  variation.  The  whole  process  of  evolving 
life,  says  Herbert  Spencer, — and  this,  affirms  John 
Fiske,  is  "one  of  the  greatest  contributions  ever 
made  to  scientific  knowledge" — is  nothing  but 
"the  continuous  adjustment  of  inner  relations  to 
outer  relations,"  the  moulding  of  the  organism 
into  some  sort  of  harmony  with  the  external  con- 
ditions of  the  environment  in  which  it  is  placed. 
Life  began  upon  this  planet  as  a  minute  cell  of 
simple  protoplasm,  with  but  a  single  attribute — 
that  of  extension  and  contraction.  But  gradually 
this  original  form  of  life  has  developed  and  ex- 


46  Function  of  the  Church 

panded,  grown  in  variety  of  type  and  complexity 
of  structure,  until  we  have  the  well-nigh  infinite 
diversity  of  life  which  is  about  us  at  the  present  mo- 
ment ;  and  while  natural  selection  and  its  attendant 
factors  have  been  the  immediate  causes  here  at 
work,  it  has  yet  been  the  action  of  the  environment 
upon  the  plastic  organism  which  has  been  at  the 
bottom  of  the  entire  process.  It  was  the  environ- 
ment of  water  which  developed  the  fins  and  scales 
of  the  fish  and  fashioned  that  wonderfully  beauti- 
ful and  efficient  breathing  apparatus  which  we 
call  the  gills.  It  was  the  action  of  the  terrestrial 
environment  which  transformed  the  fish  into  the 
reptile,  and  the  action  of  the  atmosphere  which 
changed  the  reptile  into  the  bird  and  made  possible 
the  coat  of  feathers  and  wings  as  a  mode  of  loco- 
motion. Every  form  of  life,  again,  was  originally 
blind — there  was  no  such  thing  as  sight ;  but  rays  of 
light  were  in  the  environment,  and  they  fashioned 
that  wonderful  instrument  of  vision  which  we  call 
the  eye.  Every  form  of  life  was  originally  deaf — 
there  was  no  such  thing  as  hearing;  but  acoustic 
vibrations  were  everywhere  stirring  the  atmos- 
phere and,  beating  constantly  upon  the  sensitive 
surface  of  the  organism,  hammered  into  shape  at 
last  that  instrument  for  catching  sound  which  we 
call  the  ear.  In  the  gradual  evolution  of  life  upon 
this  planet,  that  is,  with  its  growing  complexity  of 
structure  and  its  ever-increasing  variety  of  attri- 
butes, "every  stage  of  enlargement  has  had  refer- 
ence to  actual  existences  outside,  .  .  .  everywhere 


What  is  an  Individual  ?  47 

the  internal  adjustment  has  been  brought  about 
so  as  to  harmonise  with  some  actually  existing  ex- 
ternal fact."  In  other  wordF,  the  organism  has  been 
made  what  it  is,  in  each  and  every  case,  funda- 
mentally by  the  conditions  of  its  environment. 

This  overshadowing  importance  of  environment 
as  the  basic  factor  in  the  evolutionary  process  is 
frequently  forgotten,  if  it  is  ever  noticed  at  all, 
owing  to  the  fact  that  it  almost  never  works  alone 
and  its  own  particular  consequences  therefore  are 
almost  never  apparent  as  such.  Being  what  Spen- 
cer calls  "the  primordial  and  fundamental  factor" 
of  organic  evolution,  it  acts  almost  always  as  the 
mere  preparation  for  the  much  more  decisive  and 
apparent  influences  of  such  factors  as  natural 
selection,  heredity,  and  variation.  The  very 
"primary  and  universal"  quality  of  most  of  the 
effects  achieved  by  the  action  of  the  environment 
pure  and  simple,  makes  most  "changes  of  its 
class,"  says  Spencer,  "pass  entirely  unnoticed." 
It  is  only  when  the  environment  suddenly  changes, 
or  a  living  organism  is  placed  in  an  environment 
with  which  it  is  totally  unfamiliar,  or  we  see  dif- 
ferent environments  acting  through  long  periods 
of  time  upon  organisms  of  the  same  kind,  that  the 
remarkable  changes  due  to  the  external  action  of 
the  surrounding  medium  become  plainly  apparent. 
Two  striking  instances  of  this  kind  are  given  by 
Charles  Darwin  in  his  "Origin  of  Species,"  and 
are  cited  by  Spencer  in  his  "Factors  of  Organic 
Evolution."    The  first  is  that  of  several  varieties 


48  Function  of  the  Church 

of  maize  which  were  native  "to  the  hottest  parts" 
of  the  American  continent.  These  varieties  were 
transplanted  to  the  northern  portion  of  Germany — 
a  much  colder  region — and  "in  the  course  of  only- 
two  or  three  generations,"  says  Darwin,  "the 
grain  was  utterly  transformed"  in  appearance  and 
in  character,  presumably  by  the  action  of  the 
changed  environment.  And  the  second  instance 
is  that  of  a  Mr.  Meehan,  who  wrote  "a  remarkable 
paper  comparing  twenty-nine  kinds  of  American 
trees,  belonging  to  various  orders,  with  their 
European  prototypes."  In  the  comparison,  Mr. 
Meehan  found  striking  differences  between  the 
American  and  the  European  varieties — differences 
which  "must  have  been  caused,"  says  Darwin, 
"by  the  long-continued  action  of  the  different 
climate  of  the  two  continents  upon  the  trees." 
Or  compare,  from  our  own  knowledge,  the  ever- 
green-trees of  northern  New  England  with  the 
palm-trees  of  Arabia — the  moss  and  lichens  of 
Labrador  with  the  rank  vegetation  of  the  Amazon- 
ian forests;  or  climb  a  mountain  in  any  part  of 
the  world,  and  watch  how  the  vegetation  changes 
step  by  step  from  the  grass  and  flowers  in  the  val- 
ley, up  to  the  stunted  and  shivering  shrubs  of  crags 
and  chasms,  and  finally  to  the  barren  wastes  which 
are  covered  by  nothing  but  snow  and  ice — and  we 
have  definite  illustrations  of  the  direct  influence 
of  the  environment  upon  plants  and  trees.  Or 
turn  to  the  animal  kingdom  for  similar  examples ! 
"The  fur    of  mammals,"   says  Dr.  David  Starr 


What  is  an  Individual?  49 

Jordan,  in  his  recent  book  entitled  "Evolution 
and  Animal  Life,"  "always  fits  them  to  their 
surroundings" — or,  reversing  the  statement,  the 
environment  has  very  largely  determined  the  hide 
of  the  polar  bear  as  compared  with  the  skin  of 
the  African  lion.  If  the  change  from  one  climate 
to  another  is  too  sudden  or  too  extreme,  the  in- 
fluence of  the  environment  will  be  so  strong  as  to 
be  fatal ;  as  in  the  case  of  the  native  sheep  of  Eng- 
land which  have  developed  a  long  wool  fitted  to 
protect  them  in  a  cold,  damp  climate.  "Such 
sheep,  transferred  to  Cuba,"  says  Dr.  Jordan, 
"died  in  a  short  time,  leaving  no  descendants." 
A  Mr.  Gould,  quoted  approvingly  by  Darwin  in 
his  "Origin  of  Species,"  believes  that  birds  of  the 
same  species  are  more  highly  coloured  under  a 
clear  atmosphere  than  when  living  near  the  coast 
or  on  islands ;  while  a  Mr.  Wollaston,  quoted  by 
Darwin  in  the  same  passage,  is  convinced  that 
residence  near  the  sea  affects  the  colours  of  in- 
sects. Or,  for  a  particularly  striking  example  of 
the  direct  influence  of  environment,  take  the 
whale  which,  as  we  know,  is  not  a  fish  at  all,  but 
a  mammal  or  land  animal.  Compelled  by  some 
peculiar  combination  of  circumstances  to  take 
to  the  water  as  its  permanent  abode,  the  whale 
has  been  so  moulded  by  its  utterly  changed  en- 
vironment, that  to-day  it  has  all  the  superficial 
aspects  of  a  bona  fide  fish ;  and  it  is  only  when  we 
come  to  examine  its  structural  characteristics 
with  care  that  we  discover  its  true  mammalian 


50  Function  of  the  Church 

nature.  Its  body  has  become  elongated  and  nar- 
row like  that  of  a  fish  and  ends  in  a  decidedly 
fishy  tail;  its  hide  has  been  transformed  into  a 
skinny  sort  of  covering  like  a  fish's  scales;  its 
front  legs  have  been  changed  into  fins;  and  its 
hind  legs  have  almost  wholly  disappeared,  a  mere 
rudiment  being  tucked  away  in  the  lower  part 
of  the  body  to  reveal  where  these  legs  once 
appeared.  Or  again,  let  me  recall  the  discovery 
which  was  made  in  the  Mammoth  Cave  in  Ken- 
tucky, where  the  fishes  in  the  subterranean  lakes 
and  rivers  of  this  mighty  cavern  were  found  to 
have  fully-formed  eyes  like  any  animal,  but  these 
eyes  absolutely  blind !  Centuries  of  utter  darkness 
in  the  environment  have  simply  destroyed  the 
sight,  leaving  the  dead  and  useless  organs  as  a 
proof  that  vision  once  existed. 

Now  these  are  some  of  the  instances  which  may 
be  cited  to  show  the  direct  action  of  the  environ- 
ment upon  the  existing  organism.  This  action, 
as  I  have  said,  is  so  seldom  found  uncomplicated 
by  the  more  immediate  action  of  the  other  factors 
in  the  evolutionary  process,  of  which  natural 
selection  is  of  course  the  most  important,  that  "it 
is  very  difficult,"  as  Darwin  has  put  it,  "to  decide 
how  far  changed  conditions  have  acted  in  a  definite 
manner.  But  there  is  reason  to  believe,"  he  con- 
tinues, "that  in  the  course  of  time  the  effects  have 
been  greater  than  can  be  proved  by  clear  evi- 
dence." And  it  is  just  this  belief  which  Herbert 
Spencer  took  up  in  his  great  philosophic  study  of 


What  is  an  Individual?  51 

life  as  the  adjustment  of  the  inner  relations  of  the 
organism  to  the  outer  relations  of  the  surrounding 
environment,  and  transformed  into  the  positive 
demonstration  that  the  influence  of  environment 
is  the  one  decisive  condition  of  the  whole  evo- 
lutionary process.  It  is  this,  says  Spencer,  in 
the  passage  already  quoted,  which  is  "primor- 
dial and  fundamental,"  determining  the  final 
characteristics  of  all  organisms.  "This,"  says 
John  Fiske,  "is  the  deepest  law  of  life  that 
science  has  been  able  to  detect."  "The  lowest 
and  most  fundamental  factor  of  evolution,"  say 
Profs.  Jordan  and  Kellogg,  in  "Evolution  and 
Animal  Life,"  "and  therefore  the  first  introduced, 
was  the  pressure  of  the  physical  environment. 
Adaptation  to  environment  is  a  thing  basic.  .  .  . 
The  adaptability  of  life  stuff,  its  plasticity  and 
capacity  of  advantageous  reaction,  is  a  funda- 
mental fact  in  organic  nature,  like  gravitation  or 
chemical  affinity  in  inorganic  nature."  And  Prof. 
Drummond  sums  it  all  up  in  one  sweeping  state- 
ment, in  his  "Ascent  of  Man,"  when  he  says: 

The  secret  of  evolution  lies  with  the  environment. 
In  the  environment — in  that  in  which  things  live  and 
move  and  have  their  being — is  found  the  secret  of 
their  being  and  especially  of  their  becoming.  Every- 
thing that  lives,  lives  in  virtue  of  its  correspondence 
with  its  environment.  .  .  .  The  supremest  factor  in 
aU  development,  therefore,  is  environment.^ 

'  The  most  recent  statement  of  this  theory  comes  from  Prince 
Kropotkin,  in  his  article  in  the  "Nineteenth  Century"  for  July, 


52  Function  of  the  Church 

Now  here  in  this  fact  of  the  influence  of  environ- 
ment as  the  fundamental  factor  of  the  evolutionary 
process — here  in  this  interpretation  of  life  as  an 
"adjustment"  between  the  inner  relations  of  the 
individual  organism  and  the  outer  relations  of  the 
surrounding  medium — do  we  find  the  most  impres- 
sive and  significant  lesson  that  evolution  has  to 
teach;  and  here  do  we  find  what  has  done  more 
than  all  else  to  change  the  whole  attitude  of  the 
thinking  world  toward  the  problem  of  the  indi- 
vidual, and  made  forevermore  impossible  the  tra- 
ditional view-point  of  church  and  society  for 
unnumbered  generations.  Here  in  the  past,  as  we 
have  seen,  we  have  been  committing  the  stupen- 
dous blunder  of  considering  the  individual  as  an 
isolated  entity,  wholly  separated  from  the  environ- 
ment in  which  he  is  placed.  We  have  been  re- 
garding the  "evolving  object  as  a  self-sufficient 
whole,"  developing  in  some  sort  of  a  vacuum. 
Here — ^like  the  old-fashioned  natural  psychology, 
which  Prof.  William  James  berates  so  soundly  in 
his  great  work  on  "The  Principles  of  Psychology," 
on  the  ground  that  it  "treated  the  soul  as  a 
detached  existence,  sufficient  unto  itself,  and 
assumed  to  consider  only  its  nature  and  proper- 
ties," failing  utterly  to  see,  as  the  new  evolution- 
ary psychology  now  makes  evident,  that  the  mind 

19 10.  He  here  states  that  "experiment  reveals  the  direct  action  of 
surroundings  as  the  main  factor  of  evolution."  Environment,  in 
other  words,  plays  the  chief  r61e  in  the  great  drama  of  the  building 
of  character. 


What  is  an  Individual  ?  53 

must  be  taken  "in  the  midst  of  all  its  concrete 
relations," — here  in  this  same  way  we  have  been 
treating  the  individual  members  of  the  social  aggre- 
gate as  detached  existences,  sufficient  unto  them- 
selves, and  have  assumed  to  consider  only  their 
nature  and  properties,  forgetting  that  the  indi- 
vidual man,  like  the  brain,  cannot  be  understood 
at  all,  unless  he  be  taken  "in  the  midst  of  all  his 
concrete  relations,"  as  an  inhabitant  of  a  material 
universe  and  a  member  of  human  society.  And 
in  this  attitude  the  Christian  church,  as  we  have 
seen,  has  certainly  been  at  all  times  one  of  the 
chief  offenders.  It  has  declared,  as  has  been 
pointed  out  at  length,  that  a  soul  was  a  soul,  re- 
gardless of  all  the  merely  external  conditions  of 
birth,  inheritance,  and  environment.  One  soul  was 
exactly  like  another  soul  from  the  standpoint  of 
its  spiritual  destiny.  It  made  no  difference  under 
what  conditions  it  was  bom  or  of  what  strain  of 
blood  it  bore  the  heritage;  it  made  no  difference 
what  kind  of  a  body  it  inhabited,  whether  healthy 
or  unhealthy,  clean  or  unclean,  weak  or  strong; 
it  made  no  difference  in  what  physical  surround- 
ings it  lived  and  toiled  from  day  to  dsiy,  whether 
surroundings  of  beauty  or  ugliness,  of  squalor  or 
luxury,  of  vice  or  virtue.  All  these  things,  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  church's  saving  work,  were 
of  no  account  or  interest.  Not  the  outward  en- 
vironment but  the  inward  spirit,  not  the  material 
surroundings  of  the  world  but  the  spiritual  state 
of  the  soul — this  was  the  church's  sole  concern; 


54  Function  of  the  Church 

and  to  be  absorbed  by  such  purely  worldly  con- 
siderations as  bodily  health,  tolerable  conditions  of 
labour,  fresh  air,  clean  food,  pure  water  and  milk, 
adequate  wages,  equality  of  industrial  opportunity, 
even  emancipation  from  chattel  slavery,  was  to  be 
diverted  from  its  main  task,  which  was  "the  cure 
of  souls."  It  is  as  though  we  should  take  the 
pebble  upon  the  shore  and  regard  it  apart  from  the 
surging  tide  which  has  rounded  its  edges  and 
smoothed  its  surfaces  and  thus  made  it  what  it  is. 
It  is  as  though  we  should  view  the  plant  wholly 
apart  from  the  soil  in  which  it  is  rooted,  the  tem- 
perature of  the  atmosphere  in  which  it  spreads  its 
leaves,  and  the  sunshine  or  the  darkness  in  which 
it  grows.  It  is  as  though  we  should  regard  the  fur 
of  the  polar  bear  apart  from  the  rigour  of  its  arctic 
home,  or  explain  the  blinded  eye  of  the  fishes 
in  the  Mammoth  Cave  without  any  knowledge 
of  the  pitch-black  darkness  of  that  subterranean 
vault.  It  is  as  though  we  should  study  the  bird 
apart  from  the  air  in  which  it  spreads  its  wings  for 
flight,  or  the  fish  apart  from  the  water  in  which 
it  swims ;  or  explain  the  eye  with  a  total  disregard 
of  the  rays  of  light  which  penetrate  the  atmos- 
phere, or  the  ear  without  any  concern  for  the 
acoustic  vibrations  which  beat  upon  its  drum. 

But  all  this  isolation  of  the  soul  from  the  envi- 
ronment in  which  it  is  placed  has  been  made 
impossible  once  and  for  all  by  the  discoveries  of 
evolution.  We  know  to-day  that  the  individual 
man  cannot  be  considered  apart  by  himself,  any 


What  is  an  Individual  ?  55 

more  than  the  animal  or  plant  can  be  so  consid- 
ered. We  know  to-day  that  "in  the  environ- 
ment— in  that  in  which  things  live  and  move 
and  have  their  being — is  found  the  secret  of 
their  being  and  especially  of  their  becoming," 
— and  that  this  great  scientific  fact  is  as  true 
of  you  and  me  and  of  all  men  bom  into  the  world, 
as  it  is  true  of  any  plant  or  tree,  of  any  bird  or 
mammal.  "How  little  have  the  best  of  us  in 
acquirements,  in  position,  even  in  character,  that 
may  be  credited  entirely  to  ourselves,"  says  Henry 
George,  in  his  "Progress  and  Poverty,"  "how 
much  to  the  influences  that  have  moulded  us !  .  .  . 
How  little  does  heredity  count  as  compared  with 
conditions!"  How  many  of  us  do  not  know  that 
we  are  what  we  are  to-day,  because  we  were  bom 
in  the  nineteenth  century,  in  the  United  States  of 
America,  in  material  comfort  and  not  in  poverty; 
were  granted  an  education  and  not  left  in  ignor- 
ance; were  guarded  by  the  shelter  of  home  and 
school  and  church  from  exhausting  labour,  vicious 
example,  and  degrading  influence — that  we  are 
what  we  are,  in  short,  because  of  the  environment 
into  which  we  were  bom  and  in  which  we  have 
always  lived?  Suppose  that  we  had  been  bom 
and  reared  not  in  America  but  in  China — and  is 
it  not  true  that,  "but  for  the  angle  of  the  eye  or 
the  shade  of  the  hair,"  we  should  have  grown  up 
as  those  around  us,  "using  the  same  speech,  think- 
ing the  same  thoughts,  exhibiting  the  same  tastes"? 
Suppose  that  we  had  been  bom  not  in  a  home  of 


56  Function  of  the  Church 

moderate  material  comfort,  but  in  the  barren 
poverty  of  an  East-Side  tenement,  and  would  we 
not  have  been  now  even  as  those  who  languish  and 
toil  in  ignorance  and  want  and  crime  in  the  cruel 
slums  of  New  York  City?  Suppose  that  you 
should  cast  your  little  girl  into  the  gutter,  to  live 
as  best  she  could,  unguarded  by  any  of  the  sacred 
influences  of  home  or  school;  and  in  her  place  in 
your  nursery  you  laid  down  some  wretched  child, 
snatched  from  the  misery  of  some  cellar  room; 
and  in  due  course  of  time,  would  not  your  girl  be 
walking  the  streets  at  night,  and  the  outcast  child, 
nourished  and  cherished  in  your  home,  be  the 
sweet  and  pure  and  lovely  woman?  "Change 
Lady  Vere  de  Vere  in  her  cradle  with  an  infant  of 
the  slimis,"  says  Henry  George,  "and  not  all  the 
blood  of  a  hundred  earls  will  give  you  the  refined 
and  cultured  woman."  We  are  very  largely  crea- 
tures of  our  environment,  every  one  of  us.  The 
abiding  racial  and  national  and  class  distinctions 
of  this  world  are  not  to  be  accounted  for  on  the 
basis  of  different  ability  or  character,  but  primarily 
on  the  basis  of  different  surroundings.  We  are 
moulded  in  speech,  in  manners,  in  habits,  in 
abilities,  in  morals,  in  ideals,  by  the  external  cir- 
cumstances which  wrap  us  round,  just  as  the  head 
of  a  Flathead  Indian  is  flattened  by  the  stone 
which  is  bound  from  earliest  infancy  to  the  top  of 
his  plastic  skull,  or  the  feet  of  the  Chinese  women 
are  distorted  by  the  unyielding  bandages  in  which 
they  are  tightly  wrapped.    The  great  majority  of 


What  is  an  Individual?  57 

men  and  women  in  the  world  are  enclosed  in  the 
fetters  of  material  conditions  which  make  impos- 
sible a  healthy  body,  an  active  mind,  or  a  pure 
soul.  Some  of  us,  perhaps,  are  strong  and  happy 
and  moderately  virtuous,  and  again  and  again  we 
take  credit  to  ourselves  for  our  condition,  and 
wonder  that  all  men  are  not  as  we  are.  But  sup- 
pose that,  from  our  fifth  or  sixth  or  seventh  year, 
we  had  laboured  in  a  tenement  making  paper 
flowers,  or  in  a  factory  weaving  cotton  cloth,  or 
in  a  coal  mine  picking  coal — would  our  physical 
condition  be  what  it  is  to-day?  Suppose  that  from 
childhood  on  we  had  been  denied  an  adequate 
mental  and  moral  education — and  would  we  feel 
the  inspiration  of  art  and  literature  and  music, 
of  good  impulses  and  high  ideals,  as  we  do  now? 
Suppose  that  we  had  been  cast  upon  the  world  with 
hands  unskilled  to  any  industry  and  brain  un- 
trained to  any  profession — and  would  we  find  the 
problem  of  getting  a  living  as  easy  as  we  find  it 
at  this  present  moment?  Suppose  that  we  had 
never  known  the  meaning  of  even  decent  comfort, 
but  had  always  been  struggling  under  the  remorse- 
less grind  of  hopeless  poverty — and  would  we  be 
quite  the  kind  of  good  citizen  that  we  are  to-day! 
Put  a  growing  plant  in  a  cold,  damp  cellar — refuse 
the  blessing  of  the  sunshine  and  the  grace  of  well- 
nourished  soil — and  behold  the  withered  and  ugly 
shrub  which  such  an  environment  produces!  Put 
a  little  bird  just  released  from  the  shell  in  a  narrow 
cage — deny  it  fresh  air,  wholesome  food,  and  a 


58  Function  of  the  Church 

chance  to  spread  its  wings — and  lo,  if  the  bird  lives 
at  all,  see  how  feeble  are  its  wings,  which  cannot  soar 
to  heaven  even  though  freedom  is  at  last  gained,  and 
how  empty  is  its  little  throat  of  the  divine  melody 
of  song !  It  is  the  environment  which  is  ' '  the  secret 
of  being  and  becoming";  it  is  the  world  which 
makes  us  what  we  are,  even  as  the  ebbing  and  rising 
tide  upon  the  beach  moulds  the  rolling  stones. 
And  we  should  never  forget  that  this  great  fact  is 
just  as  true  of  men  as  it  is  of  plants  and  animals. 

Here  now  is  the  discovery  which  has  done  as 
much  as  anything  else  perhaps  to  open  our  eyes 
to  the  truth  of  the  essentially  social  nature  of 
the  individual.  It  is  obvious,  however,  that  at  the 
heart  of  all  that  I  have  just  been  saying  about  the 
evolutionary  law  of  dependence  upon  environment, 
there  is  one  great  fallacy  of  which  I  have  not 
spoken  at  all  or  even  given  any  indication  of  being 
conscious.  I  refer  to  the  fact  that  while  this  law 
undoubtedly  holds  of  all  forms  of  animal  life  below 
the  line  of  human,  it  does  not  hold  at  all  of  men. 
Here,  as  in  the  field  of  ethics,  where  Thomas  Hux- 
ley pointed  out  the  fact  with  such  irrefragable 
logic  in  his  famous  Romanes  Lecture,  the  law  of 
evolution  suddenly  ends — or,  to  put  it  more  accu- 
rately, it  becomes  transformed  into  something 
quite  other  than  it  ever  has  been  before.  It  is  true, 
that  is,  that  all  organic  forms  of  life,  both  vegetable 
and  animal,  are  determined  in  character  very 
largely  by  environing  conditions ;  but  it  is  the  glory 
of  human  forms  of  life,  in  distinction  from  all  others. 


What  is  an  Individual?  59 

that  they  are  able  to  mould  their  own  environ- 
ment and  thus  escape  the  bondage  of  its  tyranny. 
Man  alone,  of  all  living  creatures,  can  change  the 
world  to  suit  himself — master  its  forces,  conquer 
its  terrors,  soften  its  rigours,  banish  its  perils,  in 
a  word,  make  his  own  world  according  to  his  own 
least  whim  and  fancy.  Heredity  is  important — 
environment  counts  for  much;  but  in  the  life  of 
man,  whatever  may  be  said  of  the  lower  orders  of 
existence,  the  will  is  the  supreme  factor.  By  the 
exercise  of  this  will,  man  can  make  the  desert  to 
blossom  like  the  rose,  and  blast  the  Garden  of 
Eden  into  an  arid  waste.  He  can  turn  malignant 
swamps  into  abodes  of  health,  and  make  sweet 
prairies  and  abundant  hillsides  to  reek  with  pesti- 
lence and  death.  He  can  tame  the  winds  and 
harness  the  floods.  He  can  chain  the  lightning  and 
make  it  carry  his  messages  from  continent  to  con- 
tinent. The  world  is  his — and  life  is  what  he 
makes  it.  He  is  his  own  creator  and  the  master  of 
his  own  destiny.  What  madness  to  assert  that  he 
is  the  helpless  victim  of  his  environment,  and  must 
bow  obediently  to  the  decrees  of  nature!  This 
great  law  of  evolutionary  development  may  be 
true  of  life  in  general;  but  here,  as  in  everything 
else,  man  is  the  grand  and  unique  exception. 

(2)     The  Social  Complexity  of  Civilisation 

All  this  of  course  is  very  largely  true,  and  I 
should  be  the  last  to  seek  to  deny  it  or  ignore  it. 


6o  Function  of  the  Church 

But  it  was  truer  yesterday  than  to-day,  and  is 
truer  to-day  than  it  will  be  to-morrow.  Man's 
will,  by  the  initiatory  power  of  which  he  has  been 
able  to  make  his  own  world  and  to  decide  his  own 
destiny,  has  always  been  more  or  less  limited  in 
operation  by  those  "two  kinds  of  determinism," 
upon  which  Prof.  Simon  N.  Patten  lays  such  stress 
in  his  recent  remarkable  book  entitled  "The  Social 
Basis  of  Religion" — namely,  the  "biologic  deter- 
minism" which  "covers  the  whole  range  of  hered- 
ity," and  that  "external  determinism"  of  which 
the  most  prominent  if  not  the  sole  form  is  what  is 
familiarly  known  as  "economic  determinism" — 
in  other  words,  the  social  environment!  The 
human  will,  powerful  as  it  has  been,  and  still  is, 
has  yet  never  been  able  to  emancipate  itself  from 
this  twofold  restriction,  and  has  thus  been  only 
a  very  partial  factor  in  the  determination  of  man's 
development.  The  exaggeration  of  man's  power 
to  conquer  his  environment  by  the  sheer  mastery 
of  his  will  has  been,  according  to  Prof.  Patten,  one 
of  the  commonest  errors  of  historic  interpretation. 
"To  call  an  act  one  of  will,"  he  says,  "when  the 
forces  of  biologic  selection  or  economic  pressure  are 
operative,  confuses  what  otherwise  would  be  a 
plain  problem.  If  these  two  great  forces  cover 
the  whole  field,  there  is  no  will  in  any  sense  worth 
investigating.  The  will  is  a  reality  only  when 
there  are  acts  free  from  the  pressure  of  either 
of  these  two  forces."  But  that  such  acts  have 
been   possible  only  in  the  rarest  instances   and 


What  is  an  Individual?  6i 

in  the  most  favoured  lives  is  one  of  the  most 
familiar  generalisations  of  experience. 

Man  therefore  has  never  been  quite  as  masterful 
in  his  relation  to  his  environment  as  many  persons 
have  imagined.  Pressed  upon  on  the  one  side  by 
heredity  and  on  the  other  side  by  economic  neces- 
sity, his  life  has  been  to  a  very  large  extent  deter- 
mined for  him  and  not  fashioned  by  him.  And 
this,  which  has  always  been  very  largely  true  in 
the  past,  is  overwhelmingly  true  to-day.  Heredity 
remains  what  it  has  always  been;  but  economic 
determinism  is  looming  up  every  day  as  an  ever- 
growing factor  in  the  determination  of  htunan  pro- 
gress and  personal  character.  With  the  increasing 
complexities  of  modem  social  relationships,  eco- 
nomic necessity  is  becoming  more  and  more  the 
dominant  influence  over  vast  areas  of  human  life; 
and  we  see  rapidly  approaching  that  time  defined 
by  Prof.  Patten,  when  "economic  determinism" 
with  heredity  will  "cover  the  whole  field,"  and 
there  will  be  "no  will  in  any  sense  worth  investi- 
gating." Whatever  may  have  been  true  of  man's 
power  of  self-determination  in  what  may  be  called 
the  frontier  stage  of  civilisation,  that  power  is 
rapidly  disappearing  to-day  before  the  infinite 
ramifications  of  the  social  organism;  and  so  far 
from  being  the  master  of  the  social  environment, 
man  is  very  fast  becoming  its  helpless  victim.  It 
is  almost  unbelievable  to  what  extent  the  multi- 
plying complexities  of  modem  industrial  society 
have  caught  the  individual  in  their  toils  and  re- 


62  Function  of  the  Church 

duced  him  to  utter  impotence.  In  the  old  days, 
when  the  frontier  was  still  a  reality  upon  the  out- 
skirts of  every  civilisation,  it  was  to  some  extent 
possible  for  a  man  to  live  his  own  life  and  create 
his  own  environment,  and  thus  fulfil  the  glory 
of  his  individuality.  l!f  society  pressed  too  closely 
upon  him  and  denied  him  that  opportunity  for 
free  expression  which  he  craved,  then  his  course 
of  action  was  simple.  Packing  all  of  his  goods  and 
chattels  into  a  van,  and  swinging  an  axe  over  his 
shoulder  and  a  gun  under  his  arm,  he  marched 
away  into  the  virgin  wilderness.  There  he  pre- 
empted a  piece  of  land,  cleared  an  open  space  for 
his  garden,  built  a  house;  and  there  he  lived  for 
a  generation  perhaps,  asking  nothing  of  society 
and  giving  nothing  to  society — an  isolated  indi- 
vidual sufficient  unto  himself.  If  he  wanted  water, 
he  sought  the  spring  or  the  brook ;  if  he  needed  fuel, 
he  gathered  underbrush  or  chopped  down  a  tree; 
if  he  desired  food,  he  killed  a  pig,  shot  a  deer,  or 
pulled  some  vegetables.  His  clothing  was  spun 
upon  the  wheel  in  the  kitchen,  his  light  by  night 
came  from  the  home-dipped  candles,  and  his  fur- 
niture, tools,  and  implements  of  all  kinds  were  of 
his  own  rude  manufacture. 

But  all  this  kind  of  individual  independence  is 
now  forever  a  thing  of  the  past,  save  in  a  few  hid- 
den comers  of  the  world.  The  frontier  has  prac- 
tically disappeared,  never  to  return.  Society  has 
everywhere  developed  and  expanded,  until  men 
must  live  together,  dependent  upon  one  another. 


What  is  an  Individual?  63 

or  not  at  all.  And  it  is  this  gradual  covering  of 
the  whole  field  of  humanity  by  the  complexity  of 
the  modem  social  organism  which  has  forced  upon 
our  attention,  as  never  before,  the  essentially 
social  character  of  the  individual.  A  man  to-day 
must  be  a  social  creature  whether  he  wants  to  or 
not.  Speaking  of  the  "new  varieties  of  sin" 
which  have  become  conspicuous  of  late.  Prof. 
Edward  A.  Ross,  in  his  "Sin  and  Society,"  remarks 
wisely : 

Modern  sin  takes  its  character  from  the  mutualism 
of  our  time.  Under  our  present  manner  of  living, 
how  many  of  my  vital  interests  I  must  entrust  to 
others!  Nowadays  the  water-main  is  my  well,  the 
trolley-car  my  carriage,  the  banker's  safe  my  old 
stocking,  the  policeman's  billy  my  fist.  My  own  eyes 
and  nose  and  judgment  defer  to  the  inspector  of  food 
or  drugs  or  gas  or  factories  or  tenements  or  insurance 
companies.  I  rely  upon  others  to  look  after  my  drains, 
invest  my  savings,  nurse  my  sick,  and  teach  my 
children.  I  let  the  meat-trust  butcher  my  pig,  the 
oil-trust  mould  my  candles,  the  sugar-trust  boil  my 
sorghum,  the  coal-trust  chop  my  wood,  the  barb-wire 
company  split  my  rails.  .  .  .  Interdependence  puts 
us,  as  it  were,  at  one  another's  mercy. 

And  this  is  true,  we  may  add,  of  every  smallest 
detail  of  modem  social  life.  Absolutely  dependent 
upon  society  for  the  satisfaction  of  my  slightest 
needs,  I  am  the  helpless  victim  of  society.  Getting 
my  water  not  from  my  well  but  from  the  municipal 


64  Function  of  the  Church 

water  system,  I  am  subject  to  the  pollution  which 
again  and  again  vitiates  the  stream.  Getting  my 
milk  not  from  my  own  cow  but  from  the  distribu- 
ting company  or  corporation,  I  must  endure  all  the 
perils  of  dirt  and  disease  which  swell  profits  and 
assure  big  dividends.  Procuring  my  food  not 
from  my  own  garden  but  from  the  public  market, 
I  am  the  victim  of  every  cheat  and  adulterator  in 
the  community.  Earning  my  living  not  by  labour 
in  my  own  home  or  on  my  own  land,  but  in  the 
factory  or  on  the  ranch  or  in  the  mine,  I  earn  such 
wages  and  toil  such  hours  and  work  under  such 
conditions  of  light  and  air  and  sanitation  and 
safety  from  fire  as  the  greed  of  the  capitalistic  sys- 
tem of  industry  may  permit.  In  other  words, 
''under  our  present  manner  of  living,"  my  life  is 
not  my  own  life  at  all,  but  the  life  which  is  deter- 
mined for  me  by  society.  I  am  the  victim  and  not 
the  creator  of  the  social  organism  of  which  I  am 
an  almost  infinitesimal  part.  Miss  Jane  Addams 
describes  this  truth  most  impressively  in  her  essay 
on  "Woman's  Conscience  and  Social  Ameliora- 
tion" in  the  volume  entitled  "The  Social  Appli- 
cation of  Religion."  Speaking  particularly  of 
women,  she  says: 

We  have  been  accustomed  for  many  generations 
to  think  of  woman's  place  as  being  entirely  within 
the  walls  of  her  own  household.  ,  .  .  There  is  no 
doubt,  however,  that  many  women  to-day  are  failing 
to  discharge  their  duties  to  their  own  families  and 


What  is  an  Individual?  65 

households  simply  because  they  fail  to  see  that,  as 
society  grows  more  complicated,  it  is  necessary  that 
woman  shall  extend  her  sense  of  responsibility  to 
many  things  outside  of  her  own  home,  if  only  to  pre- 
serve that  home  in  its  entirety.  One  could  illustrate 
[she  continues]  in  many  ways.  A  woman's  simplest 
duty,  we  would  say,  is  to  keep  her  house  clean  and 
wholesome,  and  to  feed  her  children  properly.  Yet, 
if  she  lives  in  a  tenement  house,  as  so  many  of  our 
neighbours  do,  she  cannot  fulfil  these  simple  obli- 
gations by  her  own  efforts,  because  she  is  utterly 
dependent  upon  the  city  administration  for  the  con- 
ditions which  render  decent  living  possible.  Her  base- 
ment will  not  be  dry,  her  stairs  will  not  be  fireproof, 
her  house  will  not  be  provided  with  sufficient  windows 
to  give  her  light  and  air,  nor  will  it  be  equipped 
with  sanitary  plumbing,  unless  the  Public  Works 
Department  shall  send  inspectors  who  constantly 
insist  that  these  elementary  decencies  be  provided. 
These  same  women  who  now  live  in  tenements,  when 
they  lived  in  the  country,  swept  their  own  doorways, 
and  either  fed  the  refuse  of  their  tables  to  a  flock  of 
chickens  or  allowed  it  innocently  to  decay  in  the 
open  air  and  sunshine;  now,  however,  if  the  street  is 
not  cleaned  by  the  city  authorities,  no  amount  of 
private  sweeping  will  keep  the  tenement  free  from 
grime;  if  the  garbage  is  not  properly  collected  and 
destroyed,  she  may  see  her  children  sicken  and  die 
from  diseases  from  which  she  alone  is  powerless  to 
shield  them,  although  her  tenderness  and  devotion 
are  unbounded ;  she  cannot  even  secure  clean  milk  for 
her  children,  she  cannot  provide  them  with  fruit 
which  is  untainted,  unless  the  milk  has  been  properly 
s 


66  Function  of  the  Church 

taken  care  of  by  the  City  Health  Department,  and 
the  decayed  fruit,  which  is  so  often  placed  upon  sale 
in  the  tenement  districts,  shall  have  been  properly 
destroyed  in  the  interest  of  public  health.  In  short, 
if  a  woman  would  keep  on  with  her  old  business  of 
caring  for  her  home,  and  rearing  her  children,  she 
will  have  to  have  some  conscience  in  regard  to  public 
affairs  .  .  .  and  take  part  in  the  movements  looking 
toward  social  amelioration. 

In  other  words,  the  problem  of  life  to-day  is  no 
longer  the  problem  of  the  individual  but  the  prob- 
lem of  the  society  which  environs  the  individual 
and  determines  the  conditions  of  his  life.  "Under 
our  present  manner  of  living,"  as  Miss  Addams 
points  out  with  splendid  emphasis,  our  affairs  are 
undergoing  "the  process  of  socialisation,"  and 
must  be  handled  therefore  from  the  social  and  not 
from  the  individual  point  of  view. 

Miss  Addams  in  this  passage  is  dealing  of  course 
with  the  tenement  dweller  in  the  great  city;  and 
it  may  well  be  imagined  perhaps  that  the  conquest 
of  the  individual  by  society  is  limited  to  the  great 
areas  of  modem  municipal  life.  Vast  as  these 
areas  undoubtedly  are,  there  are  yet  vaster  realms 
of  undeveloped  country,  which  approximate  more 
nearly  to  the  frontier  stage  of  civilisation  than  to 
the  city  stage,  of  which  the  tenement-home  is  the 
climacteric  and  therefore  the  most  terrible  expres- 
sion; and  in  these  more  or  less  rural  districts,  this 
"process  of  socialisation"  cannot  as  yet  be  very 
far   advanced.     This    assertion,    I    grant,    seems 


What  is  an  Individual?  67 

plausible  enough  on  the  surface;  and  yet,  closely 
examined,  it  is  easily  discovered  that  nothing 
could  be  farther  from  the  truth.  With  our  modem 
methods  of  transportation  and  communication, 
with  the  ever-increasing  tendency  toward  special- 
isation of  occupation  and  production,  with  the 
rapid  development  of  our  modem  industrial  sys- 
tem with  its  trusts  and  corporations,  with  the 
exploitation  of  the  natural  resources  of  new  coun- 
tries or  regions  by  capitalists  coming  from  older 
countries  and  equipped  with  unmeasured  re- 
sources of  wealth,  the  "process  of  socialisation" — 
or  "mutualism,"  as  Prof.  Ross  calls  it — has  become 
well-nigh  universal,  and  even  the  most  isolated 
individual  in  the  most  remote  region  has  been 
successfully  entrapped  in  its  coils.  No  more 
striking  illustration  of  this  fact  could  be  given 
than  that  cited  by  Dr.  Charles  W.  Eliot,  in  his 
recent  book  on  "The  Conflict  between  Individual- 
ism and  Collectivism  in  a  Democracy."  "The 
individual  citizen,"  he  declares,  "has  become  much 
less  independent  than  he  was  before  1850."  And 
then  instead  of  turning  to  the  congested  cities  for 
his  illustration,  he  turns  to  a  remote  district  in 
the  state  of  Maine,  where  the  people  might  seem 
to  have  maintained  their  individuality  if  anywhere. 

Thirty  years  ago,  [he  says],  the  people  on  Mt. 
Desert  Island,  Maine,  enjoyed  an  extraordinarily 
independent  life.  They  got  their  food  from  the  sea 
and  from  their  own  farms  and  gardens  on  the  shore, 


68  Function  of  the  Church 

and  their  fuel  from  their  own  wood-lots.  They  raised 
their  own  sheep,  spun  their  own  yarn,  and  wove  their 
own  cloth,  except  that  they  had  recently  acquired  the 
habit  of  buying  cotton  warps  which  they  filled  with 
wool.  They  built  their  own  vessels  from  the  island 
timber,  and  were  masters  of  their  own  carrying-trade. 
They  exported  salt-fish,  lumber  and  granite  products 
of  their  own  labour;  and  imported  very  little  except 
sugar,  tea,  and  coffee,  cotton  goods,  metal  tools,  and 
crockery.  A  Mt.  Desert  householder  in  those  days 
was  an  extraordinarily  independent  and  self-contained 
individual,  who  was  touched  by  the  collective  action 
only  at  the  annual  town-meeting,  in  the  proceedings 
of  which  he  took  an  active  part.  He  personally 
owned  all  the  instruments  of  production  which  he 
needed;  and  if  he  went  fishing  in  a  vessel  larger  than 
he  and  his  boy  could  manage,  he  went  on  shares  in  an 
equitable  co-operative  fashion.  The  situation  of  the 
Mt.  Desert  householder  to-day  is  utterly  changed.  He 
now  imports  almost  everything  he  eats,  drinks,  or  wears, 
and  almost  all  the  material  with  which  his  shelters  are 
built.  He  has  become  dependent  upon  other  people 
and  their  industries  for  the  necessaries  of  life — as  much 
so  as  the  inhabitant  of  a  closely-built  city.  He  must  do 
just  what  city  people  have  to  do — sell  his  labour,  skill, 
judgment,  or  experience,  for  money  with  which  to  buy 
the  necessaries  of  life.  He  has  perhaps  more  health, 
comfort,  and  enjoyment  of  life  than  he  used  to  have; 
but  he  is  no  longer  an  apt  illustration  of  extreme 
individualism,  and  has  become  subject  to  collectivism. 

By  such  facts  as  these  has  it  now  been  deeply 
impressed  upon  the  modem  mind  that  a  new  inter- 


What  is  an  Individual?  69 

pretation  of  the  individual  is  necessary.  Great 
minds  have  always  understood,  as  we  have  seen, 
that  behind  every  problem  of  the  individual  stands 
the  overshadowing  problem  of  the  whole ;  but  never 
until  to-day  has  this  truth  been  apprehended  in  all 
of  its  real  significance.  Through  the  development, 
on  the  one  hand,  of  the  philosophy  of  evolution,  with 
its  emphasis  upon  heredity  and  more  especiallyupon 
the  influence  of  environment,  and  with  its  inter- 
pretation of  society  in  terms  of  what  Spencer  has 
called  "the  social  organism";  and  through  the 
development,  on  the  other  hand,  of  modem  civil- 
isation, with  its  miracles  of  intercommunication 
and  interdependence,  its  vast  industrial  enter- 
prises uniting  thousands  of  men  in  the  doing  of  a 
common  work,  its  multiplying  complexities  of 
social  utilities  and  mechanisms  arising  wholly  from 
the  conscious  endeavour  of  men  to  live  and  work 
together,  its  amazing  expansion  of  knowledge  and 
sympathy  making  us  see  more  truly  than  St.  Paul 
ever  saw  that  "whether  one  member  suffers,  all 
the  members  suffer  with  it;  or  one  member  be 
honoured,  all  the  members  rejoice  with  it," — 
mainly  through  this  twofold  development  has  the 
social  character  of  the  human  person  become  a 
demonstrated  fact,  and  "a  new  interpretation  of 
individual  life  a  necessity  of  rational  thought." 
We  are  obliged  to-day  to  think  in  terms  not  of  the 
part  but  of  the  whole,  not  of  the  member  but  of 
the  body,  not  of  the  individual  but  of  the  social 
organism.     Hence  "the  transition  from  a  philo- 


70  Function  of  the  Church 

sophy  bounded  by  the  individual  to  a  philosophy 
concerning  the  social  order,"  which  constitutes  the 
epoch-making  phenomenon  of  the  present  age. 
This  transition  in  thought,  says  Prof.  Peabody,  in 
the  book  already  quoted, 

can  be  compared  with  nothing  less  than  the  trans- 
ition in  astronomy,  when  the  Ptolemaic  conception 
of  the  universe  was  supplanted  by  the  Copernican 
conception,  and  the  earth  which  had  seemed  the 
centre  of  a  system  was  discovered  to  have  its  orbit 
as  one  of  many  planets  around  a  larger  sun.  So  the 
philosophy  of  individualism,  with  its  Ptolemaic  con- 
ception of  the  individual  life,  is  supplanted  by  the 
philosophy  of  the  social  order,  where  the  individual 
finds  himself  within  the  Copernican  system  of  a 
larger  world. 


CHAPTER  IV 

the  social  question 

(a)  the  individual  socialised 

SUCH  is  the  answer  which  our  age  has  made  to 
the  question,  What  is  the  individual?  The 
individual  is  a  member  of  the  organic  body  of 
society,  and  hence  essentially  social  in  his  nature. 
The  individual  is  an  epitome  of  the  society  of 
which  he  is  a  member.  Behind  every  individual 
are  the  physical,  political,  industrial,  economic,  so- 
cial conditions  which  have  very  largely  made  him 
what  he  is;  and  behind  every  individual,  there- 
fore, the  all-embracing  problem  of  the  social  whole. 
And  it  is  this  answer,  spoken  in  imperative  tones, 
which  has  created  what  we  have  learned  to  call 
the  social  question,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  is  the 
one  all-absorbing  problem  of  our  time.  The  charac- 
teristic features  of  the  present  day  are  the  new 
social  vision  which  for  the  first  time  in  himian  his- 
tory has  cast  its  gaze  full  upon  the  misery,  the  ig- 
norance, and  the  vice  of  the  great  masses  of  the 
population,  and  sees  things  as  they  really  are;  the 
new  social  conscience  which  has  at  last  awakened 
to  the  essential  wrong  which  is  involved  in  a  social 
condition  which  dooms  the  millions   to  hopeless 

71 


72  Function  of  the  Church 

poverty,  wretchedness,  and  sin,  and  which  promises 
to  remain  ill  at  ease  so  long  as  that  social  condition 
endures;  the  new  social  ideahsm  which  dreams 
its  dreams  and  sees  its  visions,  like  the  prophets 
of  ancient  days,  and  looks  forward  confidently 
to  the  establishment  of  God's  Kingdom  upon  the 
earth;  and  the  new  social  consecration  which  is 
moving  thousands  of  eager  yoimg  men  and  women 
to  give  themselves — body,  mind,  and  soul — to  the 
task  of  bringing  in  this  Kingdom  as  the  noblest 
and  divinest  work  which  their  hands  and  their 
hearts  can  find  to  do.  The  concrete  problems  of 
our  age  are  social  problems — capital  and  labour, 
wealth  and  poverty,  the  wage-system,  industrial 
accidents;  the  overshadowing  question  of  our  day 
is  the  social  question — the  relations  of  men  with 
one  another  in  the  world  that  now  is;  the  domi- 
nating passion  of  our  age  is  the  social  passion — 
the  desire  to  serve  those  who  are  in  need,  to  heal 
those  who  are  bruised,  to  liberate  those  who  are 
bound  by  the  chains  of  ignorance  and  want;  the 
controlling  ideal  of  our  day  is  the  social  ideal,  which 
embodies  itself  in  practical  endeavours  after  ma- 
terial comfort,  mental  efficiency,  moral  strength, 
and  spiritual  happiness  for  all  men  and  women 
upon  the  earth.  It  is  perfectly  true  that  social  in- 
justice has  always  existed  in  the  world — manifest- 
ing itself  under  more  hideous  aspects  of  inequality 
and  misery  yesterday  than  to-day — and  is  there- 
fore nothing  in  any  sense  new.  But  what  is  new  is 
the  burning  consciousness  that  this  social  injustice 


The  Social  Question  73 

exists — that  it  exists  unnecessarily  and  not  at  all 
in  the  natural  order  of  things — and  that  it  must 
therefore  be  done  away  with  at  once,  if  our  society, 
like  the  fabled  cities  of  Sodom  and  Gomorrha,  is 
not  to  merit  the  curse  of  God.  And  it  is  just 
because  of  this  new  consciousness  of  our  time  that 
this  age  is  rightly  to  be  described  not  as  the  age 
of  material  development,  or  scientific  progress, 
or  industrial  achievement,  but  as  distinctively 
the  age  of  social  reform.  "Behind  all  the  extra- 
ordinary achievements  of  modem  civilisation," 
says  Prof.  Francis  G.  Peabody,  in  his  "Jesus 
Christ  and  the  Social  Question," 

its  transformation  of  business  methods,  its  miracles 
of  scientific  discovery,  its  mighty  combinations  of 
political  forces,  there  lies  at  the  heart  of  the  present 
time  a  burdening  sense  of  social  maladjustment  which 
creates  what  we  call  the  social  question.  ...  It  is 
the  age  of  the  social  question.  Never  were  so  many 
people,  learned  and  ignorant,  rich  and  poor,  philo- 
sophers and  agitators,  so  stirred  by  this  recognition 
of  inequality  in  social  opportunity,  by  the  call  to 
social  service,  and  by  dreams  of  a  better  social 
world. 

And  what  is  this  social  question,  as  we  have 
said,  but  the  attempt  to  act  upon  our  new  dis- 
covery of  the  significance  of  the  individual?  What 
is  it  but  the  endeavour  to  translate  our  social 
philosophy  into  social  action — the  endeavour  of 
humanity  to  readjust  its  various  practical  activi- 


74  Function  of  the  Church 

ties,  so  that  they  shall  be  in  harmony  with  the 
transition  which  has  already  taken  place  in  its 
thought.  We  have  already  learned  to  think  of 
the  individual  as  a  social  creature;  now  we  are 
trying  to  act  toward  him  as  a  social  creature — 
which  means  that  we  are  to-day  going  through 
the  throes  of  a  social  revolution,  just  as  we  have 
already  been  through  the  throes  of  an  intellectual 
revolution.  We  see  the  signs  of  this  readjustment 
or  social  revolution  in  every  field  of  human  en- 
deavour. We  see  it  in  modem  industry,  where 
men  are  struggling  to  do  away  with  competition 
in  favour  of  combination,  and  to  end  the  warfare 
between  capital  and  labour  on  a  basis  of  mutual 
co-operation.  We  see  it  in  modem  politics,  where 
the  government  is  concerning  itself  less  and  less 
with  the  mere  machinery  of  administration,  and 
more  and  more  with  the  concrete  problems  of  as- 
sociated life.  We  see  it  in  modem  education,  which 
is  to-day  trying  to  solve  the  problem  of  making 
the  individual  not  merely  cultured,  but  socially  ef- 
ficient. We  see  it  in  modem  ethics,  where  conduct 
is  more  and  more  being  defined  not  in  terms  of  the 
private  virtues  and  vices  of  the  individual,  but  in 
terms  of  the  relation  of  that  individual  to  the  needs 
and  aspirations  of  the  common  life.  We  see  it  in 
modem  medicine,  where  physicians  are  busied  not 
so  much  with  curing  individuals  who  are  ill,  as  in 
abolishing  the  conditions  of  social  life  which  make 
disease  to-day  inevitable.  We  see  it  in  modem 
criminology,  which  refuses  to  condemn  the  indi- 


The  Social  Question  75 

vidual  offender  as  an  individual,  but  condemns  the 
society  which  has  made  him  what  he  is.  We  see  it 
in  modem  charity  and  philanthropy,  which  has 
abandoned  the  field  of  individual  relief  for  that  of 
social  prevention,  and  interprets  poverty  and  neg- 
lect in  terms  of  social  rather  than  of  individual 
responsibility.  Everyivhere  to-day  is  society  in 
the  process  of  readjusting  its  activities  in  the  light 
of  its  new  conception  of  the  individual.  We  find 
ourselves  face  to  face,  in  industry,  in  politics,  in 
education,  in  philanthropy,  not  with  this  individ- 
ual and  that  individual  and  the  other  individual, 
but  face  to  face  simply  with  the  social  whole.  It 
is  the  body  with  which  we  have  to  deal  and  not  the 
members.  Hence  has  our  age  under  the  compul- 
sion of  this  new  thought  become  absorbed  in  the 
problem  of  the  social  organism,  which  constitutes 
what  we  have  agreed  to  call,  as  we  have  seen,  the 
social  question! 

So  revolutionary  is  this  new  conception  of  the  in- 
dividual, especially  in  its  social  consequences, — so 
complete  a  * '  right-about-face  "  does  it  achieve  in  all 
our  practical  ways  of  reaching  and  grappling  with 
the  problem  of  the  individual  life  through  the  in- 
stitutions of  school  and  church  and  state, — that  I 
venture  to  consider  here  at  some  length  two  of 
these  fields  of  human  endeavour  in  which  the  most 
startling  and  thorough-going  changes  of  method 
have  taken  place.  I  refer  first  to  the  field  of 
medicine;  and  second  to  the  field  of  charitable 
relief. 


76  Function  of  the  Church 

(b)  physical  disease 

Few  better  illustrations  of  the  essentially  social 
character  of  our  age,  as  contrasted  with  the  ram- 
pant individualism  of  a  generation  or  so  ago,  could 
be  given  perhaps  than  the  revolutionary  concep- 
tion of  the  significance  of  physical  disease  which 
has  within  a  comparatively  few  years  captured  the 
leaders  of  the  medical  profession. 

(i)  Disease  Individual 

Within  the  easy  memory  of  people  now  living, 
disease  even  of  the  most  contagious  nature  was 
regarded  as  a  purely  individual  matter,  concerning 
only  the  person  afflicted,  or  at  most  the  immediate 
members  of  his  household.  An  interesting  instance 
of  this  fact  is  given  in  William  De  Morgan's  charm- 
ing novel,  "AHce-For-Short,"  a  story  depicting 
life  in  London  a  half  century  ago.  In  the  course  of 
the  tale,  a  little  child  is  stricken  with  small-pox; 
and,  to  the  modem  reader,  accustomed  to  modern 
medical  practice,  the  indifference  of  everybody 
concerned  to  the  contagious  character  of  this  viru- 
lent disease  is  almost  unbelievable.  The  house, 
in  which  the  patient  lies  ill,  is  not  isolated  or 
guarded  by  any  action  of  the  municipal  authorities. 
The  father  of  the  child  goes  directly  from  the 
bedside  of  the  invalid  to  his  work  in  another  part 
of  the  town,  walking  freely  in  the  streets  and  riding 
in  the  public  conveyances.  And  one  evening  this 
same  father  is  described  as  taking  Alice,  who  was 


The  Social  Question  'J^ 

acting  as  the  child's  nurse,  for  a  ride  in  a  cab,  in  order 
that  she  might  breathe  a  Httle  fresh  air  for  a  few  mo- 
ments ;  and  when  the  cabman  is  informed  that  one  of 
his  fares  has  come  directly  from  the  bedside  of  a 
small-pox  patient,  he  offers  no  objection  whatsoever. 
Such  conduct  as  this  is  to-day  so  inconceivable 
as  well-nigh  to  persuade  us  that  the  novelist,  like 
another  Homer,  has  in  this  case  been  nodding. 
Indeed,  De  Morgan,  anticipating  such  scepticism 
as  this  in  the  minds  of  his  readers,  goes  out  of  his 
way  at  this  point  of  the  narrative  to  bear  witness 
to  the  fact  that  he  himself  was  living  in  the  city  of 
London  fifty  years  ago,  and  therefore  knows  what 
he  is  talking  about.  For  within  a  comparatively 
few  years  our  whole  attitude  toward  physical 
diseases  of  all  kinds  has  been  wholly  changed.  In 
this  age  we  recognise  that  disease  presents  what  is 
at  bottom  a  social  and  not  merely  an  individual 
problem.  "The  pubHc  health,"  says  Dr.  Lyman 
Abbott,  in  his  "Spirit  of  Democracy,"  "is  seen  to 
be  something  more  than  the  health  of  individuals." 
The  physician,  standing  by  the  bed  of  illness,  knows 
to-day  that  he  is  dealing  not  merely  with  the  indi- 
vidual patient,  but — what  is  infinitely  more  import- 
ant— with  the  whole  organism  of  the  social  fabric. 
And  this,  because  of  two  epoch-making  discoveries ! 

(2)  Disease  Social  in  its  Consequences 

In  the  first  place,  we  have  come  very  clearly  to 
understand,   that,  in  many  instances,   disease  is 


78  Function  of  the  Church 

social  in  its  consequences.  The  man  who  is  dying 
of  the  cholera  in  India  is  a  menace  to  every  person 
in  the  United  States;  the  yellow-fever  patient  in 
Havana  is  a  peril  to  every  citizen  in  the  port  of 
New  York;  and  the  little  girl  languishing  of  tuber- 
culosis on  the  lower  East  Side  is  of  very  immediate 
concern  to  every  pampered  and  coddled  child  in 
the  white  palaces  on  upper  Fifth  Avenue.  Disease, 
in  other  words,  from  the  standpoint  of  conse- 
quences, is  very  frequently  a  social  phenomenon. 
Its  ravages  cannot  possibly  be  confined  to  the 
individual  organism.  "Therefore,"  says  Dr. 
Lyman  Abbott  again,  "we  have  Health  Boards, 
beginning  in  our  great  cities,  extending  through  our 
states,  and  now.  .  .  soon  to  be  organised  into  a 
bureau  of  the  federal  government,  for  the  purpose 
of  compelling  obedience  to  sanitary  laws  and 
stamping  out  epidemics."  So  clear  is  our  under- 
standing of  the  inevitable  social  consequences  of 
disease,  that  when  such  disease  enters  my  house- 
hold, I  am  at  once  deprived,  by  common  consent, 
of  all  those  rights  and  privileges  which,  under 
ordinary  circumstances,  I  am  guaranteed  as  an 
individual.  My  boy,  who  is  ill  of  the  small-pox, 
is  snatched  from  my  arms  by  the  public  authorities 
and  consigned  to  a  pest-house.  My  house  is  iso- 
lated from  all  communication  with  the  outer  world ; 
and  I  and  all  members  of  my  family  are  held  as 
prisoners,  regardless  of  personal  inconvenience  and 
possible  business  ruin.  When  a  contagious  disease 
appears,  in  other  words,  no  individual  has  any 


The  Social  Question  79 

rights  which  society  is  bound  to  respect.  The 
social  welfare  takes  precedence  over  every  indi- 
vidual consideration;  and  this  because  disease, 
from  the  standpoint  of  its  consequences  at  least, 
presents  at  bottom  a  social  problem. 

(3)  Disease  Social  in  its  Causes 

More  epoch-making,  however,  than  the  dis- 
covery that  disease  is  social  in  its  consequences, 
is  the  much  more  recent  discovery  that  disease 
is  also  social  in  its  causes.  Disease,  in  other  words, 
does  not  begin  with  the  individual  any  more  than 
it  ends  there.  In  the  vast  majority  of  cases  it  is 
simply  a  product  of  our  modem  civilisation.  We 
manufacture  invalids  to-day,  just  exactly  as  we 
manufacture  boots  and  shoes,  or  cotton  cloth. 
Weakened  limbs,  broken-down  organs,  disordered 
functions,  infectious  ailments,  chronic  invalidism, 
to  say  nothing  of  such  specific  industrial  diseases 
as  "phossy  jaw"  or  the  "bends," — all  these  are 
something  more  than  the  concern  of  the  individual 
for  the  simple  reason  that,  traced  to  their  ultimate 
origins,  they  are  found  to  be  the  result  of  certain 
conspicuous  and  preventable  causes  which  inhere 
in  nothing  other  than  the  social  structure.  The 
individual  is  ill,  not  because  of  a  faulty  physical 
inheritance,  not  because  of  exposure  to  contagion, 
not  even  because  of  excesses  or  vices  of  unwise  per- 
sonal habit;  but  because,  in  the  majority  of  cases, 
he  is  obliged  to  live  and  labour  under  material 


8o  Function  of  the  Church 

and  social  conditions  which  render  bodily  health 
impossible.  And  this  means  of  course,  that,  if  we 
would  cure  the  individual  when  stricken — and  still 
more,  if  we  would  prevent  the  individual  from 
being  stricken  in  the  first  place — we  must  move 
from  the  individual  to  society,  proceed  from  the 
sick  chamber  in  the  home  or  from  the  ward  in  the 
hospital  to  the  tenement,  the  street,  the  factory, 
the  city, — the  whole  social  environment  of  the  indi- 
vidual,— and  seek  so  to  change  existing  conditions 
that  health  and  not  sickness,  strength  and  not 
weakness,  shall  be  fostered.  The  physician  must 
be  not  merely  a  general  practitioner  but  also  a 
social  reformer — he  must  heal  his  patient  not 
merely  by  the  application  of  drugs  to  the  ailing 
individual,  but  also  by  the  application  of  progres- 
sive legislation  to  the  unjustly  organised  social 
whole.  Physical  disease,  in  other  words,  is  at 
bottom  a  problem  of  social  justice ;  and  the  healing 
of  disease  at  bottom  a  problem  of  social  reconstruc- 
tion. Make  society  what  it  ought  to  be,  and  dis- 
ease, we  are  told,  will  practically  disappear.  Nor 
are  illustrations  in  support  of  this  startling  con- 
tention by  any  means  few.    For  example ! 

(a)  Infant  Mortality 

One  of  the  most  pitiful  problems  with  which  the 
physician  has  to  deal  is  that  of  children's  diseases; 
and  in  this  problem  no  one  fact  is  so  conspicuous 
as  the  great  difference  in  the  amount  of  illness  and 


The  Social  Question  8i 

mortality  of  children  in  the  different  orders  of 
society.  Dr.  L.  Emmett  Holt,  the  eminent  special- 
ist of  New  York,  remarks  upon  this  fact  in  an 
article  in  the  "Journal  of  the  American  Medical 
Association"  for  February  26,  1910. 

All  who  practise  medicine  among  children  [he  says] 
and  who  study  the  question  of  infant  mortality 
statistically  are  struck  with  the  marked  contrast 
between  the  death-rate  of  the  children  of  the  poor 
and  those  of  the  rich.  Clay  estimates  that  in  England 
in  the  aristocratic  families  the  mortality  of  the  first 
year  is  10%;  in  the  middle  class,  21%;  and  in  the 
labouring  class,  32%.  This  difference  in  the  infant 
mortality  of  the  various  classes  [he  continues]  is 
most  striking  in  the  case  of  acute  intestinal  disease. 
Haller  states  that  of  170  deaths  from  this  cause 
investigated  in  Graz  in  1903  and  1904,  there  were 
161  among  the  poor,  9  among  the  well-to-do,  and 
none  among  the  rich. 

Similar  conditions  have  been  made  famihar 
from  investigations  in  New  York.  Thus  a  re- 
cent study  of  the  New  York  Health  Depart- 
ment records  for  two  typical  summer  weeks 
showed  the  remarkable  facts:  (i)  that  in  28  fash- 
ionable blocks  with  a  population  of  7,561  people, 
no  babies  died  during  the  last  two  weeks  of  July, 
1907;  (2)  that  in  five  fairly  well-to-do  blocks,  with 
a  population  of  7,696,  no  babies  died  during  the 
same  period;  (3)  that  in  three  tenement  blocks, 
with  a  population  of  7,858,  sixteen  babies  died 
6  • 


82  Function  of  the  Church 

during  this  same  period.  If  this  rate  had  con- 
tinued, every  baby  bom  in  these  three  blocks 
during  the  entire  year  would  have  perished ! 

Now  facts  like  these  mean  something  in  terms 
not  merely  of  physical  disease  but  also  of  political 
economy.  Eight  thousand  babies  die  every  year 
in  New  York  of  preventable  diseases,  so  we  are  told 
by  the  Department  of  Health !  And  preventable — 
why?  Not  because  the  infants  are  neglected  by 
the  parents,  or  maltreated  by  nurses,  or  unskil- 
fully treated  by  physicians — but  simply  and  solely 
because  the  diseases  themselves  from  which  the 
children  die  are  the  results  of  social  conditions 
which  can  be  and  ought  to  be  cured  forthwith. 
These  deaths  are  preventable  because  they  are 
caused  more  or  less  directly  by  social  injustice 
which  is  itself  preventable.  "You  can  kill  a  man 
with  a  tenement  just  as  well  as  with  an  axe,"  said 
Jacob  A.  Riis  at  one  time — and  this  same  thing 
is  even  truer  of  a  baby.  Dr.  L.  Emmett  Holt 
cherishes  few  illusions  as  to  the  meaning  of  exces- 
sive mortality  among  the  children  of  the  poor. 

It  may  not  be  true  in  adult  life  [he  writes  in  the 
article  referred  to  above]  but  in  infancy  money  may 
purchase  not  only  health,  but  it  may  purchase  life, 
since  it  puts  at  the  disposal  of  the  infant  the  utmost 
resources  of  science,  the  best  advice,  the  best  food, 
and  the  best  surroundings  for  the  individual  child. 
To  relieve,  or  even  greatly  to  diminish  infant  mor- 
tality, these  basal  conditions  of  modern  city  life — 
poverty  and  ignorance — must  be  attacked. 


The  Social  Question  83 

^  Even  more  direct  in  his  diagnosis  of  the  situa- 
tion is  Mr.  Phillips,  the  recent  Secretary  of  the  New 
York  Milk  Committee. 

The  great  crime  of  infant  mortality  in  New  York 
City  [he  writes]  is  that  eight  thousand  babies  die 
because  of  poverty.  If  the  mothers  of  the  working 
class  were  able  to  buy  enough  good  food  for  them- 
selves, they  could  feed  their  babies  at  their  breasts 
and  then  their  babies  would  not  die.  .  .  .  These 
mothers  do  not  feed  their  babies  at  their  breasts 
because  they  are  compelled  to  work  in  sweat-shops 
and  factories  to  help  their  husbands  get  enough 
money  to  keep  their  children  and  themselves  alive. 

That  this  statement  is  something  more  than  a 
theory  is  graphically  set  forth  in  a  story  told  by 
Miss  Jane  Addams  in  her  ''Twenty  Years  at  Hull 
House." 

I  was  detained  late  one  evening  [she  says]  in  an 
office  building  by  a  prolonged  committee  meeting 
of  the  Board  of  Education.  As  I  came  out  at  eleven 
o'clock,  I  met  in  the  corridor  of  the  14th  floor  a  woman 
whom  I  knew  on  her  knees  scrubbing  the  marble 
tiling.  As  she  straightened  to  greet  me,  she  seemed 
so  wet  from  her  feet  up  to  her  chin,  that  I  hastily 
inquired  the  cause.  Her  reply  was  that  she  left  home 
at  five  o'clock  every  night  and  had  no  opportunity  for 
six  hours  to  feed  her  baby.  Her  mother's  milk 
mingled  with  the  very  water  with  which  she  scrubbed 
the  floors,  until  she  should  return  at  midnight,  heated 
and  exhausted,  to  feed  her  screaming  child  with  what 
remained  within  her  breasts. 


84  Function  of  the  Church 

In  such  a  story  as  this,  if  not  in  the  statements 
of  such  experts  as  Dr.  Holt  and  Mr.  Phillips,  do 
we  see  the  real  meaning  of  the  problem  of  infant 
disease  and  mortality.  Here  is  not  a  case  of  indi- 
vidual weakness  or  ill-health  or  contagion  at  all; 
but  a  case  simply  and  solely  of  economic  inequal- 
ity— of  imjust  social  conditions.  Tell  me  how 
much  money  the  father  earns,  says  Dr.  Holt  in 
effect,  and  I  will  tell  you  what  chance  the  child 
has  to  live !  The  children  can  be  saved  only  as  fast 
and  as  far  as  society  itself  is  saved.  The  physi- 
cian, battling  with  the  problem,  cannot  stop  with 
the  child  who  is  perishing,  but  must  go  behind  him 
to  the  society  which  has  murdered  him.  The  very 
question  of  saving  this  one  individual  child,  to  say 
nothing  of  saving  the  unnumbered  thousands  yet 
unborn,  involves  the  larger  social  question  of  get- 
ting the  child  out  of  the  tenement  into  a  place 
where  it  can  get  sunlight  and  fresh-air,  of  freeing 
the  mother  from  day-labour  so  that  she  can  watch 
and  feed  her  offspring,  of  providing  the  father  with 
a  living  wage  so  that  he  can  provide  a  home  and 
nourishing  food  and  medical  advice  for  his  family. 
It  is  not  enough,  in  other  words,  to  care  for  this 
one  afflicted  child  as  an  isolated  individual.  This 
one  little  patient  means  the  dirty  tenement — the 
dirty  tenement  means  poverty — poverty  means 
the  inequitable  distribution  of  wealth — the  inequi- 
table distribution  of  wealth  means  political  cor- 
ruption, industrial  oppression,  special  privilege! 
Each  dying  child,  that  is,  opens  up  the  whole 


The  Social  Question  85 

problem  of  organised  society;  and  presents  the 
physician  with  the  task  of  reconstructing  society 
as  the  very  condition  of  restoring  the  child  to 
health. 

(b)     Tuberculosis 

^  A  still  more  striking  illustration  of  the  expan- 
sion of  the  problem  of  individual  disease  into  the 
infinitely  larger  problem  of  social  injustice  is  given 
by  tuberculosis  which,  by  reason  of  much  intelH- 
gent  and  persistent  pubHc  agitation,  is  now  gen- 
erally  recognised  as  one  of  the  most  stupendous 
social  problems  of  our  time.    I  well  remember  the 
day  when  I  entered  the  great  Tuberculosis  Exhibit 
which  was  held  in  New  York  in  1908;  and  saw  over 
the    entrance-hall    the    sign,    upon    which    was 
inscribed  the  legend-' 'Tuberculosis  is  Prevent- 
able and  Curable!    The  Remedies  are  Fresh  Air 
bunlight.  Nourishing  Food,  and  Rest!"   Here  was 
the  official  pronouncement  of  one  of  the  epoch- 
makmg   discoveries   of  modem   times— that   the 
great  White  Plague,  which  takes  its  awful  toll  of 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  dead  every  year    can 
be  prevented  and  can  be  cured-that  there  is  no 
conceivable    reason    why    one    more    individual 
should  ever  be  afflicted  with  the  disease,  and  no 
reason  also  why  those  individuals  already  so  af- 
flicted  to-day,  and  not   yet  in  the  last  stages  of 
dissolution,  should  not  be  cured.     And  best  of  all 
what  IS  needed  to  effect  this  prevention  for  the 


86  Function  of  the  Church 

futtire  and  accomplish  this  cure  to-day,  is  not  drugs 
or  herbs  or  balms  of  any  kind — ^not  physician's 
skill  or  nurse's  care — nothing  that  is  expensive  or 
unusual  and  hence  within  reach  only  of  the 
favoured  few, — but  only  those  things  which  God 
has  granted  freely  and  generously  to  all  the  sons 
of  men — air  and  light,  food  and  rest!  What  could 
be  more  wonderful  than  this?  And  yet,  as  I  gazed 
upon  that  sign  in  the  entrance-hall  of  the  Exhibit, 
— placed  there,  I  imagine,  as  a  sign  of  hope  for  all 
to  see  and  to  rejoice  at, — it  suddenly  changed  as  if 
by  magic  before  my  eyes,  and  I  read  the  old  famil- 
iar words,  "Abandon  hope,  all  ye  that  enter  here!" 
For  suddenly  it  flashed  across  my  mind,  like  a 
stab  in  the  heart,  that  these  absolutely  common- 
place things  that  are  alone  essential  for  the  pre- 
vention and  cure  of  tuberculosis  are  just  the  very 
things  which  the  vast  majority  of  those  stricken 
with  the  plague  cannot  have.  Nine  out  of  every 
ten  tuberculous  patients  cannot  by  any  possibility 
secure  a  breath  of  fresh  air,  a  ray  of  sunlight,  a 
mouthful  of  nourishing  food,  or  an  hour's  rest, 
because  society  decrees  that  these  things  shall  be 
among  the  luxuries  of  existence  and  therefore 
open  not  to  the  many  but  only  to  the  few. 
Millions  of  people  cannot  have  air  and  sun- 
shine, because  society  forces  them  to  live  in  tene- 
ments and  toil  in  sweat-shops — they  cannot  have 
nourishing  food,  because  society  denies  to  them 
a  living  wage — they  cannot  enjoy  any  rest  or 
recreation,  because  they  must  toil  early  and  late 


The  Social  Question  87 

in  order  to  keep  body  and  soul  together.  And 
these  are  the  very  people  who  are  dying  of 
tuberculosis — and  dying  not  because  there  is  any- 
thing physically  wrong  with  them  as  individu- 
als, but  because  they  have  been  forced  by  the 
social  system  of  our  day,  to  live  and  labour  under 
conditions  which  breed  the  tubercle  bacilli  as  a 
stagnant  pool  breeds  mosquitoes!  All  of  which 
means  that  when  a  physician  is  brought  to  the 
bedside  of  one  stricken  by  the  great  White  Plague, 
he  is  in  reality  brought  face  to  face  with  all 
the  political,  industrial,  and  social  conditions  of  the 
time.  Behind  every  tuberculosis  victim  is  the 
chaotic,  corrupt,  and  unjust  social  organism  of  this 
present  age;  and  the  cure  of  this  victim  is  to  be 
found  not  merely  in  the  healing  of  his  individual 
body,  but  fundamentally  in  the  reconstruction  of 
the  social  environment  which  has  destroyed  that 
body.  The  essentially  social  causes  of  this  most 
terrible  of  diseases  are  clearly  enough  seen  by  all 
modem  physicians.  Says  Dr.  S.  Adolphus  Knopf, 
the  leading  tuberculosis  expert  of  America  and  upon 
this  subject  one  of  the  great  consulting  experts 
of  the  world,  in  his  famous  prize  essay  entitled 
"Tuberculosis  as  a  Disease  of  the  Masses  and  How 
to  Combat  It,"  which  has  gone  through  seven 
American  editions  and  twenty-seven  foreign  edi- 
tions in  twenty-four  different  languages,  summing 
up  the  whole  message  of  the  essay  on  its  closing 
page — "Let  us  always  remember  that  tuberculosis 
as  a  disease  of  the  masses  has  a  large  social  aspect 


88  Function  of  the  Church 

and  that  without  improving  the  social  condition 
of  the  people,  the  disease  will  never  be  eradicated." 
Enlarging  upon  this  essential  fact  in  a  pamphlet  on 
"Tuberculosis  and  Congestion,"  Dr.  Knopf  says 
more  specifically: 

What  we  must  do  [to  diminish  tuberculosis]  is  to 
improve  the  living  conditions  of  the  masses.  .  .  . 
Not  until  we  insist  upon  lower  buildings  and  wider 
streets,  permitting  more  sunlight  to  enter  our  habi- 
tations— not  until  all  our  old  tenement  houses  and 
particularly  our  murderous ' '  lung-blocks  "  are  replaced 
by  model  tenement  houses  with  roof-gardens  on  each 
of  them — not  until  we  have  interspaced  even  these 
model  tenement  houses  with  multiple  parks  and  play- 
grounds— not  until  this  fearful  congestion  which  is 
now  the  curse  of  our  civilisation  has  been  done  away 
with — not  until  the  suburbs  of  our  large  cities  are 
utilised  for  individual  homes  of  the  masses — not 
until  the  child,  while  a  child,  shall  have  a  chance  to 
play  out-doors  without  being  obliged  to  make  a  play- 
ground of  the  overcrowded  streets — not  until  our 
traffic  facilities  will  enable  the  labourer  to  travel  in 
comfort  and  with  rapidity  to  his  sanitary  home — not 
until  we  have  given  him  the  opportunity  to  live 
modestly  and  decently  in  a  home  somewhat  closer 
to  nature  than  the  dark,  dreary  tenement  houses  of 
our  over-congested  cities,  will  tuberculosis  be  a  thing 
of  the  past.  .  .  .  Not  until  we  have  given  every 
labourer  fresh,  pure  air  to  breathe,  not  only  once  a 
week  as  we  have  done  heretofore  and  for  which  he 
had  to  leave  his  home  and  his  workshop,  but  all  the 
time, — not  until  even  the  humblest  of  workers  and 


The  Social  Question  89 

his  family  have  a  place  which  he  calls  "home" — in 
short,  not  until  we  give  him  in  return  for  his  labours 
all  to  which  he  is  entitled,  .  .  .  will  we  be  able  to 
contradict  the  words  of  the  poet,  who  said 

"God  lent  his  creatures  light  and  air. 

And  waters  open  to  the  skies. 
Man  locks  them  in  a  stifling  lair, 
And  wonders  why  his  brother  dies." 

Here,  in  this  concluding  verse  is  the  whole  of  the 
law  and  the  prophets  of  modem  preventive  medi- 
cine. Release  God's  creatures  from  the  stifling 
lairs  into  which  social  injustice  has  locked  them, 
and  the  problem  of  disease  and  premature  death 
will  be  solved.  Not  the  individual,  in  other  words, 
as  we  have  seen,  but  society ! 

(c)  Hospital  Social  Service 

It  is  the  recognition  of  this  fact  which  is  to-day 
transforming  the  methods  and  the  ideals  of  the 
medical  profession,  and  leading  to  some  of  the 
most  revolutionary  developments  that  the  world 
has  seen  since  the  early  days  of  Hippocrates  and 
Galen.  I  must  mention  at  least  two  of  these  as 
conclusive  demonstrations  of  this  thesis  of  the 
social  nature  of  disease.  I  would  refer  in  the  first 
place  to  the  remarkable  social  service  work  which 
has  become,  within  a  few  years,  a  regular  part  of 
the  activity  of  the  modem  hospital.  This  work, 
I  believe,  was  initiated  by  Dr.  Richard  C.  Cabot, 


90  Function  of  the  Church 

at  the  Massachusetts  General  Hospital  in  Boston; 
and  came  as  a  result  of  his  observation,  in  the 
regular  course  of  his  dispensary  work,  of  the  essen- 
tially social  nature  of  the  individual.  It  was  a 
great  step  forward  in  the  conquest  of  disease  and 
the  furtherance  of  human  happiness  when  public 
hospitals  were  established  and  entered  upon  their 
beneficent  work  of  healing.  Until  a  comparatively 
short  time,  however,  these  hospitals  were  content 
to  receive  patients  only  as  they  came  knocking  at 
their  gates,  one  knew  not  whence,  cure  them  of 
their  ailments,  and  then  send  them  back  into  the 
world,  one  knew  not  whither.  All  this,  now,  is 
rapidly  changing,  as  the  result  of  the  genius  of  one 
observing  and  sympathetic  man.  As  Dr.  Cabot 
went  through  the  routine  of  his  daily  work  of  diag- 
nosing and  prescribing  in  the  out-patient  depart- 
ment of  the  hospital,  he  began  little  by  little  to 
awaken  to  the  fact  that  persons  once  cured  and 
sent  away,  returned  again  and  yet  again;  and 
always  in  the  same  condition  of  weakness  or  dis- 
ease as  before.  Something  was  obviously  wrong — 
and  investigation  soon  led  to  the  discovery  that 
these  persons  were  weakened  or  diseased  to  such 
an  extent  by  their  hideous  homes  and  inhuman 
places  of  labour,  by  the  cruel  stress  and  strain 
of  their  individual  occupations,  by  their  struggle 
day  in  and  day  out,  year  in  and  year  out,  to  obtain 
a  sufficient  wage  to  keep  the  home  together  or  even 
to  live  at  all,  as  to  make  their  individual  cure  by 
hospital  treatment  alone  impossible.     What  was 


The  Social  Question  91 

needed  by  these  people  was  not  diagnosis  of  symp- 
toms and  prescription  of  drugs,  which  were  neces- 
sarily limited  to  the  individual  organism  afflicted, 
but  a  radical  transformation  of  the  character  of 
the  social  organisation,  which  made  these  people 
the  victims  of  its  cruelty  and  corruption,  and  hence 
invalids  for  the  care  of  the  physician. 

Dr.  Cabot  has  best  defined  the  philosophy  of 
hospital  social  service  in  his  book  entitled,  "Social 
Service  and  the  Art  of  Healing." 

We  physicians  [he  says]  are  prone  to  scoff  at  the 
habit  of  taking  a  drug  for  a  eymptom  like  headache, 
without  looking  deeper  to  find  the  underlying  disorder 
of  which  this  headache  is  the  symptom.  We  point 
out  very  truly  that  only  by  finding  and  removing  the 
cause  of  this  headache — an  eye-strain  perhaps  or  a 
stomach  trouble — can  its  recurrence  be  prevented.  .  . 
This  is  as  it  should  be ;  but  we  need  to  carry  the  same 
habit  further.  Why  should  we  not  push  on  and  find 
why  this  patient  has  the  stomach  trouble?  The  head- 
ache is  only  the  symptom  of  stomach  trouble,  we  say. 
Yes,  but  the  stomach  trouble  itself  may  be  only  a 
symptom  of  chronic  worry,  and  the  worry  a  symptom 
of  deficient  income.  The  patient's  expenses  turn  out 
to  be  a  trifle  larger  than  his  wages,  and  one  of  the 
many  bad  results  of  this  fact  is  the  worry  which  causes 
the  stomach  trouble,  which  in  turn  causes  the  head- 
ache. If  we  are  really  to  treat  that  patient  [he 
continues]  and  not  merely  smother  one  of  his  symp- 
toms under  a  dose  of  medicine,  we  must  push  on  into 
the  background  of  his  case,  and  see  what  disease  in 
the   body   politic — perhaps   in   the    organisation   of 


92  Function  of  the  Church 

industry — is  behind  his  individual  suffering.  Not 
that  we  should  lose  sight  of  him.  On  the  contrary, 
we  can  do  much  better  for  him,  if,  instead  of  stopping 
at  the  first  stage,  headache,  or  at  the  second  stage, 
stomach  trouble,  or  even  at  the  third  stage,  worry, 
we  go  into  the  matter  of  his  income  and  outgo,  and 
see  if  the  two  ends  cannot  be  made  to  meet.  I  have 
heard  physicians  giving  advice  to  patients  not  to 
worry,  advice  that  wotdd  be  laughable  if  it  were  not 
so  pathetic:  "Just  stop  worrying  [you  might  just  as 
well  say.  Stop  breathing],  and  take  a  long  rest.  Avoid 
all  mental  and  physical  strain."  What  his  wife  and 
children  are  to  do  meantime  never  occurs  to  this 
type  of  physician.  The  wife  and  children  are  in  the 
background,  out  of  range  of  his  vision,  and  so  for  him 
they  play  no  part  in  the  case. 

Now  it  is  this  social  "background,"  against 
which  every  individual  must  be  seen,  which  consti- 
tutes the  all-important  element  of  disease.  The 
physician  is  worse  than  foolish — he  is  almost  crimi- 
nal— if  he  fails  to  understand  that  his  patient  is 
a  social  creature,  and  that  nine  times  out  of  ten  it 
is  not  his  body  but  "the  body  politic"  which  is 
diseased.  "The  man  who  has  a  clear  sense  of  the 
individuality... of  each  person... will  yet  run  into 
confusion  and  disorder,"  says  Dr.  Cabot  again, 
"unless  he  backs  his  foreground  view  with  a  vista 
of  the  distant,  the  past  and  the  future,  the  back- 
ground of  the  community  life  out  of  which  this 
individual  has  emerged  and  to  which  he  belongs." 
To  let  the  patients  in  a  hospital  "shoot  by  us  like 


The  Social  Question  93 

comets,  crossing  a  moment  our  field  of  vision,  then 
passing  into  oblivion,"  is  simply  to  make  its  work 
of  none  effect.  ''When  the  doctor  looks  for  the 
root  cause  of  most  of  the  sickness  which  he  is 
called  upon  to  help,  he  finds  social  conditions,  such 
as  vice,  ignorance,  overcrowding,  sweat-shops,  and 
poverty."  This  means  that  "the  art  of  healing" 
is  at  bottom  social,  and  therefore  the  wise 
physician  must,  whether  or  no,  become  a  social 
reformer.  Hence  the  establishment  of  the  social- 
service  departments  in  our  hospitals  to-day  as  an 
essential  part  of  its  specific  work  of  healing  indi- 
vidual cases  of  disease. 

{d)  Society  of  Medical  Sociology 

Even  more  remarkable,  as  an  indication  of  the 
changing  character  of  medical  activity,  is  the  re- 
cent organisation  in  New  York  City,  under  the 
leadership  of  Dr.  William  J.  Robinson,  of  the 
American  Society  of  Medical  Sociology.  This 
Society  has  been  organised,  says  its  official  circular, 
because  of  the  recognition  by  the  profession  of 

the  intimate  relationship  between  disease  and  the 
social-economic  system  under  which  we  live,  that 
many  diseases  are  caused  directly  by  our  social  and 
economic  conditions,  that  the  efficiency  or  the  ineffi- 
ciency of  treatment  often  depends  upon  the  economic 
condition  of  the  patient,  and  that  there  are  many 
problems  deeply  affecting  the  welfare  of  mankind 
which  are  left  practically  untouched  by  any  existing 
medical  society. 


94  Function  of  the  Church 

This  organisation  has  enHsted  the  co-operation 
of  between  seventy  and  one  hundred  of  the  most 
distinguished  physicians  of  New  York  alone — and 
all  because  these  men  recognise  that  it  is  simply 
futile  for  the  profession  to  continue  any  longer 
with  individuals  merely  as  individuals.  The  strug- 
gle of  Mrs.  Partington  with  the  Atlantic  Ocean 
was  scarcely  less  farcical  than  the  struggle  of  the 
physicians  against  the  flood  of  disease  pouring  in 
upon  them  from  the  Atlantic  Ocean  of  modern 
social  life.  These  doctors  realise  that  if  they  are 
ever  to  heal  this  man  and  that  woman  and  the  other 
child,  they  must  go  right  behind  these  to  the  society 
which  has  wrecked  and  ruined  them.  In  other 
words,  they  see  that  they  must  not  merely  study 
symptoms  and  prescribe  drugs,  but  they  must  pass 
legislation  for  the  reform  of  housing  conditions 
and  labour  conditions ;  they  must  deal  at  first  hand 
with  the  problems  of  wages  and  hours  of  labour; 
they  must  even  go  perhaps  to  the  very  bottom  of 
our  whole  "social-economic  system,"  and  grapple 
with  the  problem  of  reconstruction.  And  hence 
have  they  organised  this  society  for  the  furtherance 
of  that  strange  phenomenon  called  "medical 
sociology." 

It  is  in  such  facts  as  these  that  we  see  the  great 
change  that  has  recently  come  over  the  work  of  the 
medical  profession  because  of  the  changed  con- 
ception of  the  character  of  the  individual.  The 
individual  is  at  bottom  social — and  hence  the 
problem  of  physical  disease  is  seen  to  be  similarly 


The  Social  Question  95 

social.  The  ''great  new  idea"  behind  this  revo- 
lution in  medical  practice,  says  Mr.  Ray  Stannard 
Baker,  in  his  illuminating  little  book  on  "New 
Ideals  in  Healing,"  is  "the  extension  of  the  sphere 
of  influence  of  the  medical  profession  from  the 
mere  bodily  healing  to  the  treatment  of  the  whole 
man." 

He  must  be  treated  [continues  Mr.  Baker]  not 
merely  as  an  unrelated  and  individual  sick  man,  but 
as  a  component  and  essential  part  of  our  close-knit 
social  life.  ...  At  the  root  of  the  great  destroyers, 
tuberculosis,  typhoid  fever,  children's  diseases,  in  no 
small  measure  lie  malnutrition,  hunger,  wretched 
housing  conditions,  dirty  streets, — in  other  words, 
poverty  and  social  neglect.  .  .  Medicine  is  thus  inti- 
mately bound  up  with  all  sorts  of  new  sociological, 
political,  ethical,  and  economic  problems. 

All  of  which  he  sums  up  in  the  basic  affirmation 
that  "most,  if  not  all,  diseases  are  not  merely 
individual  but  social." 

(c)     POVERTY 

The  second  great  field  of  human  activity  which 
I  desire  to  discuss  as  illustrating  the  change  which 
has  taken  place  in  our  methods  and  ideals,  owing 
to  our  new  conception  of  the  individual  as  a  social 
creature,  is  that  of  organised  charity — which  is 
best  discussed  perhaps  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
problem  of  poverty. 


96  Function  of  the  Church 

(l)  Progress  and  Poverty  Together 

If  any  one  should  desire  to  undertake  to  prove 
that  the  world,  in  spite  of  all  appearances,  is  not 
growing  better  with  the  passing  years,  he  would 
find  at  least  one  unanswerable  argument  in  support 
of  his  contention, — namely,  the  wretched  fact  of 
poverty.  That  this  evil  should  continue  imabated 
into  modern  times  is  one  of  those  enigmas  of  his- 
tory which  seem  to  defy  explanation.  We  are  not 
surprised,  when  we  read  the  history  of  the  Jews, 
as  it  is  recorded  in  the  historical  and  prophetic 
books  of  the  Old  Testament,  to  find  that  poverty 
was  everywhere  present  throughout  ancient  Israel, 
and  that  the  poor  constituted  one  of  the  specific 
classes  of  the  population  to  which  Jesus  felt  that 
he  had  a  definite  mission.  We  are  quite  unmoved 
when  we  read  of  the  wretched  beggars  and  slaves 
of  Periclean  Athens,  and  find  Plato  discussing 
poverty  in  his  "Republic"  as  one  of  the  most  stu- 
pendous problems  of  human  life.  We  take  it  as 
quite  in  the  natural  order  of  things  when  we  read 
of  the  squalid  misery  of  the  poor  in  Rome  for  whom 
the  Gracchi  led  their  revolt,  and  in  whose  eyes  the 
later  emperors  won  favour  by  their  lavish  gifts 
of  bread.  Nor  are  we  very  deeply  stirred  when  we 
learn  of  the  dreadful  misery  of  the  peasant  classes 
of  Medieval  Europe,  which  assumed  its  most 
hideous  aspects  perhaps  in  Bourbon  France  just 
before  the  outbreak  of  the  blood  and  fury  of  the 
Revolution.    We  accept  this  poverty  of  the  ages 


The  Social  Question  97 

past  just  as  we  accept  the  famines  and  pestilences 
which  devastated  the  populations  at  periodic  inter- 
vals,— or  just  as  we  accept  the  sailing  vessels  upon 
the  seas  and  the  stage-coaches  upon  the  land,  by 
which  our  ancestors  journeyed  from  place  to  place. 

But  it  is  a  wholly  different  matter,  when  we  look 
about  us  in  our  own  day  and  generation,  when 
famines  have  been  banished  to  such  primitive 
lands  as  India  and  China  and  pestilences  have 
altogether  disappeared,  when  the  sailing  vessel  has 
given  place  to  a  Mauretania  and  the  stage  coach 
to  a  Twentieth-Century  Limited — and  discover 
in  this  age  that  poverty  is  still  with  us  in  aspects 
which  seem  more  terrible  than  ever! 

In  Russia,  poverty  prevails  at  the  present  time 
under  circumstances  which  seem  to  reproduce  the 
most  dreadful  conditions  of  ancient  times.  In 
Italy  the  poverty  is  so  terrible  and  so  wide-spread 
that  no  less  than  four  millions  of  the  subjects  of 
Victor  Emmanuel  II.  have  come  to  this  country 
in  the  last  eight  years,  hoping  to  escape  its  clutches. 
In  England,  the  richest  country  in  the  world,  which 
has  for  centuries  led  mankind  in  the  production  of 
material  wealth,  and  whose  colonies  are  to  be  found 
in  every  quarter  of  the  globe,  the  poverty  is 
unspeakable.  In  the  slums  of  London,  in  the 
manufacturing  centres  of  Manchester,  Liverpool, 
and  Leeds,  even  in  those  lovely  rural  villages  which 
so  charm  the  eye  of  the  American  tourist,  are 
depths  of  misery  such  as  can  scarcely  be  matched 
in  the  whole  history  of  humanity.    And  even  in 


98  Function  of  the  Church 

this  country,  with  its  boundless  natural  resources, 
its  millions  of  acres  of  uninhabited  and  unculti- 
vated land,  its  wonderful  mines  and  farms  and 
manufactories,  with  a  civilisation  so  new  that  it 
nuis  back  less  than  three  hundred  years  into  the 
past  and  thus  is  burdened  with  none  of  the  inherit- 
ances of  ancient  days, — even  here  the  spectre  of 
poverty  is  rising  before  our  affrighted  gaze,  and 
is  already  taxing  the  genius  of  our  wisest  statesmen 
and  the  beneficence  of  our  most  generous  philan- 
thropists. Says  Prof.  Richard  Henry  Edwards,  of 
the  University  of  Wisconsin,  "  It  is  not  extravagant 
to  estimate  that  certainly  not  less  than  three  and 
perhaps  as  many  as  ten  millions  of  persons  in 
America  are  in  various  stages  of  poverty";  and 
Prof.  Chapin,  of  Beloit  College,  is  so  appalled  by 
the  situation  in  this  coimtry  that  he  asks  the  start- 
ling question,  "How  near  are  we  to  the  state  of 
affairs  in  England  in  1889,  when  Charles  Booth 
estimated  that  39%  of  the  people  of  England  were 
living  in  poverty?" 

Whatever  progress  mankind  has  made  in  other 
directions,  here  at  least  mankind  seems  not  to  have 
moved  forward  at  all.  We  have  the  poor  with 
us  to-day,  exactly  as  the  Hebrews  and  the  Romans 
had  them  three  centuries  before  the  birth  of  Christ. 
They  are  suffering  to-day  as  they  have  always 
suffered ;  they  are  dying  to-day  as  they  have  always 
died.  Said  a  well-known  social  reformer  some 
years  ago,  when  reminded  by  an  optimistic  friend 
of  the  recent  improvements  in  the  living  condi- 


The  Social  Question  99 

tions  of  working-men,  of  the  general  rise  in  the  level 
of  material  comfort,  and  of  the  great  increase 
within  recent  years  of  the  consimiption  of  goods: 
"All  this  is  true;  but  I  have  lived  in  Berlin,  Paris, 
London,  New  York,  and  Chicago,  and  in  all  of  them 
the  misery  of  the  masses  is  as  acute  as  ever."' 

It  was  this  appalHng  failure  of  civilisation  to 
solve  this  problem  of  poverty  which  aroused  the 
conscience  of  that  great  prophet  of  a  generation 
ago,  Henry  George.  He  it  was  who  first  awakened 
the  world  to  a  conscious  realisation  of  the  fact 
that,  whatever  progress  himianity  might  be  mak- 
ing in  other  directions,  it  was  not  moving  forward 
in  this  direction  a  single  step.  He  it  was  who  first 
impressed  upon  the  minds  of  men  the  serious  fact 
that  the  marvellous  advances  of  civilisation  during 
the  centuries  gone  by  in  nearly  every  conceivable 
line  of  human  activity  had  still  not  succeeded  in 
extirpating  poverty  or  lightening  the  burden  of 
those  compelled  to  toil.  He  it  was  who  taught  us 
that  here  the  world  was  actually  moving  backward 
rather  than  forward ;  that  progress  meant  poverty, 
and  poverty  progress;  that  "where  the  conditions 
to  which  material  success  everywhere  tends  are 
most  fully  reahsed,  where  population  is  densest, 
wealth  greatest,  and  the  machinery  of  production 
and  exchange  most  highly  developed,  there  we 
find  the  deepest  poverty,  the  sharpest  struggle  for 
existence,  and  the  most  enforced  idleness."    "Pov- 

'  Quoted  in  Patten's  "  New  Basis  of  Civilisation." 


100  Function  of  the  Church 

erty  simply  widens  the  gulf  between  Dives  and 
Lazarus." 

Here  [he  continues]  in  the  association  of  pov- 
erty with  progress,  is  the  great  enigma  of  our  times. 
It  is  the  central  fact  from  which  spring  industrial, 
social,  and  political  diflBculties  that  perplex  the  world, 
and  with  which  statesmanship  and  philanthropy  and 
education  grapple  in  vain.  From  it  come  the  clouds 
that  overhang  the  future  of  the  most  progressive  and 
self-reliant  nations.  It  is  the  riddle  which  the  Sphinx 
of  Fate  puts  to  our  civilisation,  and  which  not  to  an- 
swer is  to  be  destroyed. " 

(2)  The  Causes  of  Poverty 

Now  for  this  amazing  phenomenon  there  must 
of  course  be  some  explanation.  There  must  be 
some  cause  for  the  failure  of  the  world  to  solve 
this  problem — some  reason  why  a  race  which  has 
dispelled  the  fear  of  famine,  conquered  pestilence, 
and  harnessed  the  natural  forces  of  the  universe 
to  do  its  bidding,  has  not  banished  poverty  from 
the  homes  of  men. — To  this  inquiry  as  to  the  cause 
of  poverty,  several  answers  have  been  given  in 
times  past  and  are  still  being  given  to-day. 

(a)   The  Will  of  God 

In  the  first  place  there  is  what  may  be  called  the 
theological  explanation  of  poverty.  According 
to  this  idea,  poverty  is  the  work  of  God — as  the 
Old  Testament  writer  puts  it,  in  the  second  chap- 


The  Social  Question  loi 

ter  of  I.  Samuel:  "The  Lord  maketh  poor  and 
maketh  rich;  he  bringeth  low  and  lifteth  up";  a 
sentiment  repeated  by  the  Psalmist,  when  he  says, 
"God  is  the  judge;  he  putteth  down  one  and  set- 
teth  up  another." 

This  idea  of  the  responsibility  of  God  for  the 
existence  of  poverty  is,  of  coiu-se,  all  of  a  piece 
with  that  theological  dogma  which  teaches  that 
everything  that  happens  in  this  world  is  the  imme- 
diate work  of  God,  and  which  is  all  summed  up  in 
the  canting  phrase,  "It  is  the  will  of  God!"  To 
the  invalid,  languishing  on  a  bed  of  illness — to  the 
stricken  mother,  whose  heart  breaks  as  she  bends 
over  the  dead  body  of  her  only  son — to  the  father 
who  sees  his  children  crying  for  the  bit  of  bread 
which  he  has  not  the  wherewithal  to  purchase, — 
to  the  thousands  overwhelmed  by  earthquake  and 
flood  and  volcanic  eruption — to  all  of  these  who 
suffer,  the  priest  has  always  come  with  his  word 
of  pretended  consolation — "Be  patient;  this  is  the 
will  of  God!" 

But  while  this  explanation  of  poverty  may  have 
served  very  well  in  those  ages  of  superstition  which 
saw  the  hand  of  God  in  all  things  strange  or  ter- 
rible, it  no  longer  serves  to-day.  We  still  find 
extraordinary  survivals  of  this  idea  that  "the 
Lord  maketh  poor  and  maketh  rich,"  in  the  occa- 
sional references  of  pious  clergymen  to  "God's 
poor,"  and  in  such  occasional  utterances  as  that 
of  the  President  of  the  Reading  Railroad,  a  few 
years  ago,  that  the  mines  of  Pennsylvania  belonged 


102  Function  of  the  Church 

to  him  and  his  associates  by  divine  right.  But  we 
are  slowly  beginning  to  understand  to-day  that  to 
ascribe  such  matters  as  disease  and  untimely  death, 
pestilences  and  earthquakes,  wealth  and  poverty, 
to  the  will  of  God,  is  nothing  less  than  blasphemy. 
It  is  not  the  will  of  God  that  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  persons  in  this  country  should  be  afflicted  with 
tuberculosis;  it  is  not  the  will  of  God  that  the 
mother  should  mourn  the  child  who  has  been 
snatched  from  her  embrace  by  the  dread  angel  of 
death;  it  is  not  the  will  of  God  that  thousands 
should  perish  in  the  ruins  of  a  Messina ;  and  it  is 
not  the  will  of  God  that  millions  should  be  over- 
whelmed by  that  dire  poverty — worse  than  any 
disease  and  more  terrible  than  any  cataclysm — 
which  saps  the  body,  dulls  the  mind,  deadens 
the  affections,  and  quenches  the  inward  light  of 
the  spirit.  President  Eliot,  in  his  address  on  the 
"Religion  of  the  Future,"  did  no  greater  service 
to  human  thought  than  when  he  shattered  this 
theological  explanation  of  life's  tragedies.  "By 
no  appeal  to  the  will  of  God,"  he  says,  "will 
the  new  religion  attempt  to  reconcile  men  and 
women  to  present  ills.  Such  promises  have 
done  infinite  mischief  in  the  world,  by  induc- 
ing men  to  be  patient  under  sufferings  and 
deprivations  against  which  they  should  have 
incessantly  struggled.  The  advent  of  a  just 
freedom  for  the  masses  of  mankind  has  been 
delayed  for  centuries"  by  just  this  doctrine  of 
the  church. 


The  Social  Question  103 

(b)  The  Niggardliness  of  Nature 

Another  explanation  of  poverty  which  is  much 
more  satisfactory  and  which  contains  a  certain 
Hmited  measure  of  truth,  is  what  may  be  termed 
the  economic  explanation.  I  refer  here  to  what 
Prof.  Simon  N.  Patten  calls  the  "theory  of  de- 
ficit"— the  theory,  namely,  that  poverty  is  caused 
by  a  lack  of  material  resources  sufficient  to  satisfy 
the  legitimate  needs  of  men.  Nature,  as  John 
Stuart  Mill  put  it,  is  "niggardly";  and  great 
masses  of  men  must  siiffer  and  even  perish  for 
lack  of  sustenance,  for  the  simple  reason  that  there 
is  not  enough  to  go  around. 

Now  it  is  undoubtedly  true  that  this  "theory 
of  deficit "  is  on  the  whole  an  adequate  explanation 
of  much  of  the  poverty  which  has  existed  in  the 
world  up  to  within  a  comparatively  few  years ;  but 
it  is  also  true  that  it  is  no  explanation  of  the  pov- 
erty of  our  own  day,  and  therefore  not  a  final  solu- 
tion of  the  problem  of  misery  at  all.  The  dreadful 
poverty  of  Israel  and  Rome  and  Greece,  as  is  per- 
fectly evident  from  the  historical  accoimts  which 
have  come  down  to  us,  was  very  largely  caused  by 
the  niggardliness  of  nature.  The  population  grew 
out  of  all  proportion  to  the  increase  in  the  develop- 
ment of  natural  resources,  and  poverty  of  the  great 
masses  of  the  people  was  therefore  inevitable. 
Nor  do  we  have  to  return  to  ancient  times  to  illus- 
trate this  fact.  In  the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth, 
thirty  thousand  persons  perished  in  Ireland  in  a 


104  Function  of  the  Church 

single  year,  simply  because  there  was  nothing 
whatsoever  for  them  to  eat.  And  even  in  the 
reign  of  Victoria,  vast  numbers  of  the  Irish  people 
abandoned  the  Emerald  Isle  and  sought  new  hom.es 
across  the  seas,  where  they  hoped  that  nature 
might  be  more  propitious.  Spain,  in  the  sixteenth 
century,  when  the  Armada  had  been  destroyed, 
the  industrious  Moors  expelled,  and  the  rich  gold 
and  silver  mines  of  America  exhausted,  foimd  that 
her  resources  were  wholly  insufficient  for  her 
people,  and  poverty  of  the  most  dreadful  kind  was 
the  result.  The  poverty  of  Italy  to-day  is  simi- 
larly to  be  explained.  In  spite  of  the  enormous 
emigration  from  her  shores  during  the  last  few 
years,  her  population  is  still  out  of  all  proportion 
to  her  resources.  The  civilisation  of  ancient  times, 
the  civilisation  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  the  civil- 
isation even  of  certain  countries  to-day,  is  a  civil- 
isation based  upon  deficit,  and  upon  such  a  basis 
of  existence  poverty  is  inevitable.^ 

But  while  this  "theory  of  deficit"  may  be  a 
partial  explanation  of  much  of  the  poverty  of  cer- 
tain ages  and  certain  places,  it  is  not  an  adequate 
explanation  of  the  phenomenon  itself;  for  within 
a  comparatively  few  years,  as  Prof.  Patten  points 
out,  in  "The  New  Basis  of  Civilisation,"  we  have 
passed  from  a  period  of  deficit  to  a  period  of 
surplus.  From  having  not  enough  to  go  around, 
man  to-day  has  more  than  he  knows  what  to  do 

'See  the  discussion  of  this  point  in  Patten's  "New  Basis  of 
Civilisation," 


The  Social  Question  105 

with.  Nature  is  no  longer  "niggardly"  but  gener- 
ous; and  yet  poverty  still  continues,  abated  but 
little  from  its  early  horrors.  To-day,  I  repeat,  we 
are  living  in  a  period  of  surplus  and  not  of  deficit — • 
and  this  because  of  the  marvels  of  scientific 
achievement  during  the  last  fifty  or  one  hundred 
years.    Says  Prof.  Patten : 

Many  of  the  obstacles  in  the  way  of  the  full 
development  of  natural  resources  which  were  insuper- 
able a  century  ago  are  falling  before  the  young  genius 
of  this  mechanical  age.  Ground  that  lay  barren  be- 
cause of  ignorance  and  scarcity  of  capital  and  tools  is 
fertile  now,  because  there  are  capital  and  tools  for 
every  foot  of  agriculture.  Agriculture  has  now  be- 
come a  science,  our  food  grows  in  conquered  habitats, 
the  desert  is  sown,  and  waste  land  is  everywhere  made 
fertile.  Stable  and  progressive  farming  is  destined 
henceforth  to  control  all  the  terror,  disorder,  and 
devastation  of  earlier  times. 

The  fact  of  the  matter  is,  by  new  engineering 
devices,  by  new  methods  of  development  and  con- 
servation, by  the  application  of  newly  discovered 
scientific  truths,  we  have  been  forcing  nature  to 
yield  to  us  her  stores  of  boundless  wealth.  We 
have  made  nature  to  pay  to  us  her  tribute,  and 
thereby  have  added  to  the  quantity  of  goods  to  be 
consumed  by  society  and  have  lessened  the  labour 
necessary  to  produce  them.  Said  Prof.  Shailer,  a 
few  years  before  his  death,  "We  can  double  the 
food  supply  of  the  world  with  only  a  slight  increase 


io6  Function  of  the  Church 

of  the  population,  and  then  can  double  this  still 
again  by  the  application  of  new  inventions." 
What  wonder  that  Prof.  Patten  claims  that  our 
"new  agriculture  means  a  new  civilisation — a  new 
civilisation  which  shall  banish  poverty  forever"? 
"...  The  problem  of  our  old  civilisation,"  he  says, 
"was  to  keep  the  deficit  as  small  as  possible  and 
eventually  to  overcome  it."  But  the  problem  of 
the  new  civilisation  is  "to  utilise  the  surplus  for 
the  common  good — to  distribute  the  surplus  in 
ways  that  shall  promote  the  general  welfare." 

Nature  therefore  can  no  longer  be  regarded  as 
"niggardly";  deficit  is  transformed  into  surplus; 
and  yet,  as  we  have  seen,  poverty  is  as  hideous 
and  as  wide-spread  in  our  age  as  any  other.  Which 
means  but  the  one  thing — that  "the  theory  of 
deficit,"  while  it  seemed  to  explain  the  misery  of 
humanity  in  ages  past,  never  in  reality  did  explain ; 
and  that  we  must  look  farther  and  deeper  for  that 
ultimate  cause  of  poverty  which  we  are  seeking. 

(c)  Individual  Frailty 

Putting  aside  the  economic  explanation  as  well 
as  the  theological,  we  come  to  that  theory  which 
to-day  enjoys  the  widest  acceptance  among  the 
most  intelligent  people,  and  is  generally  regarded 
as  having  solved  the  problem.  I  refer  to  the  moral 
theory,  which  is  the  direct  outgrowth  of  the  indi- 
vidualistic philosophy  of  the  last  one  hundred 
years,  and  which,  in  accordance  with  the  teachings 


The  Social  Question  107 

of  that  philosophy,  throws  the  responsibility  for 
the  existence  of  poverty  back  upon  the  individual 
who  is  poor.  This  theory  asserts  that  people  are 
poor  simply  because  they  deserve  to  be  poor — 
that  vast  masses  of  persons  are  starving  and  freez- 
ing, inhabiting  foul  tenements  and  suffering  from 
unclean  diseases,  sunk  in  all  the  wretchedness  of 
material  want,  simply  and  solely  because  of  their 
own  intellectual  deficiencies  and  moral  imperfec- 
tions. Misery,  according  to  this  idea,  is  but 
"the  natural  working  out  of  human  character" ;  the 
inevitable  consequence  of  natural  depravity;  the 
punishment,  in  a  word,  of  sin.  If  a  family  is  poor, 
there  is  somewhere  weakness  or  folly  or  immor- 
ality. There  is  ignorance  or  stupidity,  there  is 
drink  or  debauchery,  there  is  shiftlessness  or 
laziness,  there  is  dishonesty  or  vice — there  is  some- 
thing essentially  abnormal  or  wrong  with  the  indi- 
viduals involved.  Their  material  poverty  is  but 
the  interest  which  they  have  earned  upon  the 
moral  principle  which  they  have  invested;  their 
misery  is  but  the  harvest  which  must  always  be 
reaped  from  the  sowing  of  the  seeds  of  idleness  or 
depravity;  their  wretchedness  is  but  the  punish- 
ment which  their  faults  have  visited  upon  their 
own  heads.  The  problem  of  poverty,  therefore,  is 
a  moral,  and  not  an  economic  or  theological  prob- 
lem ;  it  is  a  problem  of  the  character  of  the  indi- 
vidual man  or  woman  who  is  concerned;  and  if 
we  want  to  solve  this  problem,  we  must  make 
over  these  individuals  morally — dispel  their  igno- 


io8  Function  of  the  Church 

ranee,  banish  their  shiftlessness,  and  cure  their 
vices. 

This  is  the  theory  of  poverty  which  is  most  pre- 
valent at  the  present  time — the  orthodox  theory, 
it  has  been  called — a  theory  which  is  interwoven 
with  most  of  our  literature,  and  imderlies  most  of 
our  charitable  activities.  But  is  it  a  theory  which 
is  really  any  more  sound  than  the  others  which  we 
considered  above?  Is  it  really  true  that  people  are 
poor  because  they  are  ignorant  or  weak  or  inef- 
ficient or  morally  depraved.?  Is  the  whole  matter 
of  social  misery,  after  all,  only  one  of  the  manifold 
aspects  of  that  larger  ethical  problem  of  individual 
responsibility?  Is  it,  at  bottom,  nothing  but  a 
question  of  the  individual,  or  is  there  something 
infinitely  deeper  and  wider  involved? 

That  the  theory  of  individual  frailty  is  not  the 
final  answer  to  our  question  is  suggested  by  at 
least  two  serious  considerations.  In  the  first 
place  there  is  the  eloquent  testimony  of  many  of 
the  greatest  religious  prophets  that  the  world  has 
ever  seen.  What  for  example  are  we  to  say  about 
this  theory  in  the  face  of  the  words  of  the  mighty 
prophets  of  ancient  Israel?  These  great  teachers 
of  religion  were  very  largely  concerned  with  the 
poverty  which  afflicted  the  great  masses  of  the 
Hebrew  people  of  their  day,  and  were  full  of  denun- 
ciation and  wrath  at  its  existence.  But  all  of  their 
wrath,  it  will  be  noticed,  was  directed  not  against 
the  poor  themselves,  where  it  manifestly  should 
have  been  directed  if  they  were  themselves  respon- 


The  Social  Question  109 

sible  for  their  condition,  but  against  their  oppres- 
sors. Nowhere  can  we  find  Amos  or  Hosea  or 
Isaiah  calling  the  poor  to  account,  as  individuals, 
for  their  moral  delinquency,  and  urging  them  to 
put  away  their  sins  if  they  ever  hoped  to  escape 
from  the  misery  of  want.  On  the  contrary,  do  we 
not  find  Isaiah  condemning  in  unmeasured  terms 
the  princes  who  had  in  their  houses  the  spoils  which 
they  had  wrested  from  the  poor,  and  denouncing 
the  rich  who  were  "grinding  the  faces  of  the  poor  " ? 
Do  we  not  find  Jeremiah  constantly  demanding 
that  justice  and  righteousness  be  executed,  in  order 
that  the  poor  may  be  delivered  out  of  the  hand 
of  the  oppressor?  Here  is  Amos  talking  about  the 
poor  being  sold  for  silver,  and  referring  to  the 
powerful  who  tread  the  poor  beneath  their  feet! 
Evidently  these  great  prophets  had  an  infinite 
compassion  upon  the  poor,  and  were  inclined 
to  explain  their  poverty  as  the  result  of  social 
oppression,  and  to  seek  its  cure  in  the  establish- 
ment of  social  justice.  "Let  justice  run  down 
as  water,"  said  Amos,  "and  righteousness  as  a 
mighty  stream." 

And  when  we  come  to  Jesus,  we  find  that  exactly 
the  same  thing  is  true !  Jesus  announces  at  the  very 
beginning  of  his  ministry,  that  he  has  come  to 
"preach  the  gospel  to  the  poor,  to  preach  deliver- 
ance to  the  captives,  and  to  set  at  liberty  them 
that  are  bruised."  We  find  him  deliberately  seek- 
ing out  the  poor  to  give  them  comfort  and  conso- 
lation; and  pouring  out  the  vials  of  his  wrath  upon 


1 10  Function  of  the  Church 

those  who  devoured  widows'  houses  and  were 
guilty  of  all  manner  of  extortion  and  excess. 
Above  all,  we  find  him  promising  the  coming  of  a 
time  when  all  those  who  were  in  misery  and  want 
should  be  relieved.  "Blessed  are  ye  poor,"  he 
said,  "for  yours  is  the  Kingdom  of  heaven;  blessed 
are  ye  that  hunger  now,  for  ye  shall  be  filled; 
blessed  are  ye  that  weep  now,  for  ye  shall  laugh." 
Evidently  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  like  the  older  pro- 
phets of  Israel,  had  compassion  upon  the  poor,  and 
looked  for  the  causes  of  their  misery  somewhere 
else  than  in  the  secrets  of  their  own  hearts. 

And  then,  as  a  more  modem  instance  of  this 
same  kind  of  testimony,  there  is  the  great  sermon 
by  Theodore  Parker  upon  "Poverty,"  preached 
in  Boston  in  January,  1849.  Here,  in  his  treat- 
ment of  the  causes  of  poverty,  this  prophet  of  our 
own  time  makes  occasional  references  to  the  moral 
shortcomings  of  the  poor,  in  keeping  with  the  pre- 
vailing ideas  of  his  generation,  but  on  the  whole 
he  places  astonishing  emphasis  upon  the  social 
conditions,  of  which  he  declares  the  poor  are  the 
helpless  victims.  * '  The  causes  of  poverty, ' '  he  says, 
"are  organic,  political,  and  social.  .  .  .  Poverty, 
like  an  armed  man,  stalks  in  the  rear  of  the  social 
march,  huge  and  haggard,  gaunt  and  grim — 
treading  the  feeble  under  his  feet,  for  no  fault  of 
theirs,  only  for  the  misfortune  of  having  been  bom 
in  the  army's  rear." 

But  not  only  does  such  testimony  as  this  contro- 
vert our  comfortable  theory  of  individual  frailty 


The  Social  Question  iii 

as  the  explanation  of  poverty,  but  the  very  facts 
of  poverty  themselves. — Here  for  example  is  a 
family  which  comes  to  the  Associated  Charities 
for  relief.  What  is  the  trouble?  The  husband,  a 
man  of  good  character,  is  ill  with  tuberculosis,  is 
lying  helpless  in  a  hospital,  and  is  thus  unable 
to  work.  The  wife,  also  of  good  character,  is  a 
frail  woman,  weakened  by  inadequate  nourishment 
and  hard  work,  and  unable  therefore  to  earn 
enough  to  support  her  family.  There  are  three 
children,  but  one  of  them  of  working  age.  Here  is 
poverty — poverty  of  the  worst  description! — but 
wherein  are  these  sufferers  in  any  remotest  way 
responsible  for  their  condition? 

Here  again  is  a  case  with  which  I  chanced  to 
have  an  intimate  personal  connection.  The  family 
consisted  of  a  railroad  brakeman,  who  was  a  faith- 
ful and  efficient  workman,  an  excellent  wife,  and 
five  little  children.  They  had  always  lived  in  com- 
fort, though  not  in  luxury,  until  one  day  the  brake- 
man  was  terribly  injured  in  an  accident  and  later 
died.  The  railroad  corporation  refused  to  pay 
damages  on  the  ground  that  the  brakeman  had 
been  negligent  and  therefore  was  responsible  for 
his  own  death.  Suits  at  law  instituted  by  the 
widow  yielded  nothing  and  exhausted  what  money 
she  had  saved  or  received  from  insurance  policies. 
In  a  year  or  so  poverty  in  its  most  dreadful  aspects 
was  knocking  at  her  door;  but  wherein  was  she 
herself  responsible? 

Again,  here  are  an  aged  man  and  woman,  neither 


112  Function  of  the  Church 

able  to  work,  with  no  children  to  support  them, 
and  with  no  accumulated  savings.  Both  have 
been  persons  of  average  good  character,  and  faith- 
ful workers  during  all  of  their  active  years.  Crip- 
pled now  by  old  age,  however,  they  are  deliberately 
cast  out  upon  the  world,  doomed  either  to  beg,  to 
subsist  upon  charity,  or  to  enter  the  poorhouse. 
Wherein  are  persons  such  as  these,  brought  face 
to  face  with  poverty  after  a  lifetime  of  self-respect- 
ing independence,  to  be  held  morally  responsible 
for  their  condition? 

And  so  the  cases  might  be  multiplied  indefi- 
nitely, for  these  which  I  have  cited  are  peculiarly 
typical.  And  they  all  confirm  the  testimony  of  the 
great  prophets  of  the  past,  that  the  moral  theory 
of  poverty,  which  places  the  blame  for  his  misery 
upon  the  individual  concerned,  is  false — that 
while  there  are  undoubtedly  certain  cases  wherein 
moral  weakness  and  depravity  can  be  held  to 
accoxmt  for  poverty,  there  are  thousands  of  other 
cases  where  it  plays  no  part  at  all;  and  that  there- 
fore this  moral  theory,  while  it  does  undoubtedly 
explain  a  few  isolated  instances  of  material  want, 
and  is  a  contributing  factor  in  many  more,  never- 
theless offers  no  general  explanation  of  poverty 
as  a  social  problem.  People  are  not  poor  because 
they  deserve  to  be  poor;  poverty  is  not  a  natural 
working  out  of  human  character;  misery  is  not  a 
punishment  of  weakness,  idleness,  or  sin.  Moral 
shortcomings  may  aggravate  poverty — may 
increase  its  wretchedness  and  deepen  its  degrada- 


The  Social  Question  113 

tion;  but  the  essential  cause  is  elsewhere  than  in 
the  character  of  the  persons  involved.  "Against 
this  conception,"  says  Dr.  Edward  T.  Devine, 
the  Secretary  of  the  New  York  Charity  Organi- 
sation Society,  and  perhaps  the  most  expert  social 
worker  in  this  country  to-day,  "every  religious 
teacher  should  lift  his  voice  in  indignant  protest, 
and  every  scientific  observer  should  record  his 
testimony.  .  .  .  For  I  have  come  to  believe," 
he  continues,  "after  some  years  of  careful, 
candid,  and  open-minded  consideration  of  the 
subject,  that  this  entire  view  of  poverty  is  one 
which  rests  upon  an  unproved  and  unfounded 
assumption." 

(d)  Social  Conditions 

The  moral  theory  of  poverty,  therefore,  must 
be  put  aside  along  with  the  theological  and  eco- 
nomic theories ;  and  we  come  at  last  to  that  theory 
which  is  rapidly  finding  acceptance  to-day  with 
all  scientific  social  workers,  and  which  has  been 
suggested  in  all  that  I  have  been  saying  above. 
I  refer  to  the  theory  of  "social  conditions,"  which 
has  received  its  most  recent  and  most  authoritative 
expression  in  Dr.  Edward  T.  Devine's  remarkable 
book,  "Misery  and  its  Causes." —  "I  wish  to 
present  the  idea,"  says  Dr.  Devine,  in  one  of  the 
opening  paragraphs  of  this  essay,  "that  misery  is 
the  result  of  social  maladjustment;  that  defective 
personality  is  only  a  half-way  explanation,  which 


114  Function  of  the  Church 

itself  restilts  directly  from  conditions  which  society- 
may  largely  control." 

Poverty,  that  is,  is  primarily  the  resiilt  of 
adverse  social  conditions— "conditions,"  says  Dr. 
Devine,  in  words  which  sum  up  the  whole  truth  in 
this  regard,  "over  which  the  individual  who  suffers 
is  unable  to  exercise  effective  control,  but  which 
are  not  beyond  social  control."  The  cause  of  pov- 
erty, in  other  words,  is  social.  It  is  not  the  will  of 
God  that  poverty  should  blight  the  lives  of  mil- 
lions of  our  fellow  creatures,  any  more  than  it  is 
his  will  that  pestilence  should  devastate  the  race 
or  famine  exact  its  dreadful  toll  of  death.  It  is 
not  the  "niggardliness  of  nature"  which  is  respon- 
sible for  poverty,  for  nature  is  now  yielding  more 
than  is  necessary  to  satisfy  the  needs  of  men.  It 
is  not  our  weak  and  imperfect  human  nature 
which  makes  poverty  keep  pace  with  progress,  for 
poverty  is  by  no  means  coincident  with  defective 
personality.  Poverty  inheres  neither  in  the  will  of 
God  nor  in  the  constitution  of  the  material  world 
nor  in  the  nature  of  humanity.  Poverty,  like 
disease,  is  an  accident — a  result  of  injustice  and 
oppression,  an  offspring  of  social  maladjustment, 
a  social  crime,  and  therefore,  like  disease,  a  thing 
which  can  be  abolished  just  as  soon  as  society 
makes  up  its  mind  to  aboHsh  it.  "Misery,"  says 
Dr.  Devine  again — and  here  he  lays  down  the 
principle  upon  which  nearly  all  modem  scientific 
charity  is  based — "misery  like  tuberculosis  is 
preventable  and  curable.    It  lies  not  in  the  nature 


The  Social  Question  115 

of  things,  but  in  our  human  institutions,  and  social 
arrangements,  in  our  tenements  and  streets  and 
subways,  in  our  laws  and  courts  and  jails,  in  our 
religion,  our  education,  our  philanthropy,  our  poli- 
tics, our  industry,  and  business."  Poverty,  in 
short,  is  the  result  of  nothing  else  than  a  society 
imperfectly  organised,  and  its  ctue  is  to  be  found 
in  nothing  else  than  a  society  reorganised  upon 
the  basis  of  perfect  justice  and  in  the  light  of  luii- 
versal  good-will. 

In  setting  forth  this  general  conclusion  as  to  the 
cause  of  poverty.  Dr.  Devine  does  not  confine 
himself  to  such  sweeping  generalisations  as  have 
just  been  cited.  On  the  contrary,  he  gives  num- 
erous facts  and  figures  drawn  from  the  abundant 
records  of  the  Charity  Society  of  New  York,  where 
the  problem  of  poverty  in  this  country  is  perhaps 
most  acute.  In  the  array  of  statistics  presented 
in  demonstration  of  his  thesis,  there  is  nothing 
more  significant  than  the  table  of  the  "principal 
disabilities  present  in  five  thousand  dependent 
families  in  New  York."  Five  thousand  families, 
chosen  at  random  from  the  many  thousands  which 
have  sought  relief  from  the  Society  diu-ing  the 
last  few  years,  were  studied  from  the  standpoint 
of  the  disabilities  which  made  the  application  for 
public  relief  necessary, — in  other  words,  the  disa- 
bilities which  created  a  condition  of  poverty  too 
serious  to  be  endured  without  assistance.  These 
disabilities,  when  analysed,  were  grouped  under 
twenty-five    headings,    which    included    all    the 


ii6  Function  of  the  Church 

adverse  conditions  which  were  known  to  be  present 
at  the  time  of  the  application  for  reHef ,  and  in- 
cluding also  all  the  defects  of  individual  character 
which  were  considered  an  element  in  the  situation. 
The  result  is  interesting.  Of  all  of  these  twenty- 
five  disabilities  which  have  led  to  poverty,  only 
five  occurred  in  20%  or  more  of  the  five  thousand 
families,  and  of  these  five  all  were  strictly  social 
in  their  character.  In  69%  of  the  cases,  unemploy- 
ment appeared;  in  45%,  overcrowding;  in  30%, 
widowhood;  in  27%,  chronic  physical  disability, 
due  to  disease  or  permanent  injury;  and  in  20%, 
temporary  physical  disability.  It  is  only  when  we 
go  below  20%  of  the  families  investigated  that  we 
find  any  disabilities  which  ought  fairly  to  be  de- 
scribed as  defects  of  individual  character.  Of  these, 
intemperance  is  the  most  common,  appearing  in 
16%  of  the  cases;  and  then  follow  laziness,  12%; 
immorality,  5%;  mental  disease  or  deficiency, 
4x7%;  criminal  record,  3%;  violent  temper,  2%; 
and  gambling  less  than  ii%.  What  wonder, 
in  the  face  of  these  figures,  that  Dr.  Devine 
asserts  that  poverty  is  essentially  due  to  social 
maladjustment  and  not  to  individual  defects — 
that  poverty  is  due  to  adverse  conditions  "over 
which  the  individual  who  suffers  is  unable  to  exer- 
cise effective  control,  but  which  are  not  beyond 
social  control"?' 

'  As  this  book  is  going  through  the  press,  there  appears  a 
statement  from  the  New  York  Association  for  Improving  the 
Condition  of  the  Poor  regarding  the  conditions  surrounding  the 


The  Social  Question  117 

Poverty,  in  this  age  as  in  every  age,  in  our 
country  as  in  every  country,  is  primarily  due  to  the 
fact  of  social  injustice — that  employment  cannot 
be  had  by  those  who  are  ready  to  work;  that 
employment  even  when  regular  is  not  paid  enough 
to  enable  even  the  faithful  and  efficient  workman 
to  guard  against  illness,  to  protect  his  widow  from 
dependence,  or  to  provide  for  his  own  old  age; 
that  insufficient  wages  force  thousands  of  families 
to  crowd  into  unhealthy  tenements,  to  eat  insuf- 
ficient food,  and  to  wear  insufficient  clothing,  thus 
paving  the  way  for  physical  weakness  and  disa- 
bility ;  that  accidents  rob  the  wage-earners  without 
compensation  from  society;  that  taxes  are  inequi- 
table, throwing  the  chief  burdens  upon  the  poor 
instead  of  upon  the  rich;  that  natural  resources, 
which  are  the  basis  of  all  wealth,  are  in  the  hands 
of  a  few  instead  of  under  the  control  of  society  at 
large,  and  are  thus  exploited  for  the  benefit  of  the 
few  and  not  for  the  sake  of  the  common  welfare ;  that 
the  distribution  of  wealth  is  grossly  unfair  and  dis- 
proportionate ; — in  the  last  analysis,  that  society  is 


families  that  have  been  relieved  during  the  past  summer  (191 1): 
"  The  two  most  striking  points  were  the  large  number  of  families 
reduced  to  poverty  by  sickness,  and  the  insignificant  part  played 
by  intemperance  as  a  contributing  cause.  Of  the  1573  cases  in 
the  Association's  care,  sickness  was  the  cause  of  poverty  in  681 
cases,  or  43%.  Intemperance  caused  a  trifle  less  than  2%. 
Unemployment  was  the  second  most  important  cause,  with  25%. 
Insufficient  income  led  12%  to  seek  relief;  death  and  accident, 
4%;  old  age,  1%.  Other  contributing  causes  were  imprison- 
ment, fire,  mental  deficiency,  immorality,  and  insanity." 


ii8  Function  of  the  Church 

organised  upon  a  basis  of  injustice  and  not  of  justice, 
and  is  permeated  by  the  spirit  of  selfishness  and  not 
of  love.  Defects  of  individual  character  are  of 
course  contributory  factors  in  numberless  cases 
of  poverty — intemperance,  criminality,  immoral- 
ity, gambling,  all  play  their  part,  as  we  have  seen, 
although  in  an  amazingly  smaller  percentage  of 
cases  than  most  of  us  perhaps  had  ever  imagined. 
But  even  in  these  facts,  we  must  not  forget  that 
there  is  more  often  than  not  ultimate  social  respon- 
sibility. For  is  poverty  caused  by  intemperance, 
or  is  intemperance  caused  by  poverty;  is  a  man 
poor  because  he  drinks,  or  does  he  drink  to  intoxi- 
cation because  he  is  poor?  There  is  not  much  doubt 
in  Dr.  Devine's  mind  at  least  as  to  the  answer  to 
this  inquiry,  for  he  goes  out  of  his  way,  as  it  were, 
to  raise  the  question  in  his  book,  as  to  whether 
"the  poor  who  suffer  in  their  poverty  are  poor 
because  they  are  shiftless,  because  they  are  undis- 
ciplined, because  they  drink,  because  they  steal, 
or  whether  they  are  shiftless  and  undisciplined, 
they  drink  and  steal,  because  our  social  institu- 
tions and  arrangements  are  at  fault"!  Poverty, 
in  other  words,  is  not  caused  fundamentally  by 
personal  defects  of  character,  but  personal  weak- 
ness and  wickedness  and  sin  are  more  often  than 
not  caused  by  poverty.  As  Theodore  Parker 
pointed  out  over  fifty  years  ago,  in  his  great  ser- 
mon upon  "  Poverty,"  the  poor  constitute  the  neg- 
lected classes  of  society  and  therefore  the  classes 
which  degenerate  and  never  rise  above  the  level 


The  Social  Question  119 

of  their  own  degradation.  It  is  the  poor  who, 
because  of  their  poverty,  cannot  educate  their 
children  and  therefore  are  forced  to  perpetuate 
ignorance  and  inefficiency.  It  is  the  poor  who, 
because  of  their  poverty,  cannot  learn  the  virtues 
of  thrift  and  diligence,  or  teach  them  to  their 
children.  It  is  the  poor  who,  because  of  their 
poverty,  cannot  protect  themselves  against  dis- 
ease and  accident  and  physical  disability.  It  is 
the  poor  who,  because  of  their  poverty,  are  most 
easily  tempted  to  drink,  debauchery,  and  vice. 
It  is  the  poor  who,  because  of  their  poverty,  are 
first  led  to  the  committing  of  crime.  "  Everything 
is  against  the  poor  man,"  said  Parker.  "He  pays 
the  dearest  tax,  the  highest  rent  for  his  home,  the 
dearest  price  for  all  he  eats  and  wears.  He  has 
the  most  numerous  temptations  to  intemperance 
and  crime,  and  the  poorest  safeguards  from  these 
evils.  He  is  the  most  liable  to  disease,  and  his 
children  are  the  most  unhealthy,  neglected,  and 
untaught."  Thus  does  poverty  breed  poverty; 
thus  does  the  poverty  of  one  generation  itself 
create  and  perpetuate  the  poverty  of  the  next ; 
thus,  as  the  wise  proverb-writer  put  it,  "is  the 
destruction  of  the  poor  their  poverty. ' *  Talk  about 
the  weaknesses  and  vices  of  the  poor  as  we  may; 
emphasise  their  ignorance  and  inefficiency  and 
immorality  as  much  as  we  please;  the  fact  still 
remains  that  they  are  what  they  are  because  so- 
ciety has  made  them — that  they  are  where  they  are 
because  society  has  placed  them  there — that  they 


120  Function  of  the  Church 

are  not  offenders  but  victims,  and  victims  of  con- 
ditions for  which  society  is  almost  alone  respon- 
sible. Thus  at  bottom  is  social  injustice  the  cause 
of  poverty;  and  thus  was  the  prophet  Amos  right 
when  he  declared  eight  centuries  before  the  birth 
of  Christ,  that  "justice  must  run  down  like  water 
and  righteousness  like  a  mighty  stream,"  ere 
poverty  and  all  of  its  attendant  ills  could  be 
overthrown. 

(3)  Poverty,  a  Social  Crime 

Poverty  is  thus  explained  upon  the  basis  not  of 
the  individual  but  of  society.  And  this  being  the 
case,  we  must  agree  that  poverty,  not  being  a 
divine  decree  or  a  natural  ill  or  a  moral  penalty, 
must  be  ultimately  described  as  a  social  crime,  like 
infant  mortality  and  tuberculosis.  There  is  no 
longer  any  conceivable  reason  to-day  why  poverty 
should  continue  to  shame  the  civilisation  of  which 
we  boast.  There  is  no  longer  any  reason  under 
heaven  why  progress  and  poverty  should  continue 
to  be  associated  together.  So  long  as  men  believed 
that  poverty  was  the  work  of  God,  or  were  taught 
to  attribute  it  to  the  inability  of  nature  to  supply 
the  wants  of  a  rapidly  increasing  population,  or 
thought  it  due  to  the  inherent  weakness  and  de- 
pravity of  human  nature,  they  were  justified  in  re- 
garding poverty  as  one  of  the  necessary  ills  of  life, 
which  must  be  endured  because  it  cannot  be  cured. 
But  to-day  this  attitude  toward  poverty  is  inex- 


The  Social  Question  121 

cusable.  We  know  to-day  that  these  explanations 
of  poverty  are  unsound.  We  know  that  the  cause 
of  poverty  must  be  traced  back  not  to  God  nor 
to  nature  nor  even  to  the  individual,  but  to  the 
artificial,  unjust,  and  changing  conditions  of  social 
organisation.  And  we  know  therefore  that  pov- 
erty, like  all  other  ills  of  the  social  order,  is  both 
curable  and  preventable.  Poverty,  from  this 
point  of  view,  is  to  be  classified,  as  Dr.  Devine 
actually  does  classify  it,  with  tuberculosis.  We 
have  learned  within  recent  years,  as  we  have  seen, 
that  tuberculosis,  like  the  great  majority  of  bodily 
diseases,  is  social  in  origin — that  it  inheres  not  in 
the  tissues  of  the  body  but  in  the  living  and  work- 
ing conditions  of  society — that  it  can  be  banished 
if  all  men  can  be  given  fresh  air,  warm  sunshine, 
nourishing  food,  and  periodic  rest  and  recreation — 
that  these  things  lie  to-day  within  the  gift  of  the 
social  organism,  and  that  therefore  the  continuance 
of  tuberculosis  is  nothing  less  than  a  social  crime. 
And  what  is  true  of  tuberculosis  is  also  true  of 
poverty ! 

And  now  what  does  all  this  analysis  of  the  causes 
of  poverty  mean  as  regards  the  methods  and  prac- 
tices of  our  organised  charity  societies?  Modem 
charities  may  be  said  to  have  gone  through  three 
definite  periods  of  development.  Until  within 
comparatively  recent  times  charity  was  a  mere 
matter  of  indiscriminate  alms-giving  to  the 
afflicted  individual.  We  passed  a  beggar  on  the 
street — we  flung  him  a  coin — and  the  thing  was 


122  Function  of  the  Church 

done !  Within  the  last  fifty  or  sixty  years,  however, 
it  came  to  be  clearly  recognised  that  this  was  a 
wasteful  and  not  seldom  dangerous  method  of 
procedure;  and  with  the  recognition  of  this  fact 
there  came  the  second  period,  which  may  be  de- 
scribed as  the  period  of  charity  organised  on  the 
basis  of  individual  service.  "Not  alms,  but  a 
friend,"  became  the  cry.  The  philosophy  of  this 
type  of  charity,  which  is  still  overwhelmingly  in 
favour  at  the  present  time,  is  of  course  based  upon 
the  idea  that  the  pauper,  like  the  hospital  patient, 
is  in  some  way  responsible  for  his  condition,  and 
that  the  cure  is  therefore  to  be  effected  by  the 
healing  of  his  individual  weaknesses  and  disorders. 
More  recently,  however,  as  I  have  pointed  out 
above,  there  has  come  the  recognition  of  the  fact 
that  poverty  like  disease  is  "not  merely  individual 
but  social" — that  in  the  case  of  the  pauper,  as  in 
the  case  of  the  invalid,  "the  whole  man  must  be 
treated," — which  means  that  one  must  go  behind 
the  poverty-stricken  individual  to  the  "close-knit 
social  life"  of  which  he  is  "a  component  and  essen- 
tial part."  In  other  words,  the  eradication  of 
poverty  is  to  be  found  not  merely  in  friendship 
for  the  individual  who  is  afflicted,  but  in  the  mili- 
tant reform  of  the  social  organisation  afflicting. 
Not  charity  but  justice  is  the  remedy!  Poverty 
can  be  banished  not  by  transforming  directly  the 
moral  character  of  the  individual,  but  by  changing 
the  unjust  social  conditions  which  breed  poverty, 
even  as  foul  tenements,  dirty  streets,  and  exhaust- 


The  Social  Question  123 

ing  labour  breed  tuberculosis.  Provide  employ- 
ment for  every  willing  worker ;  give  the  labourer  a 
due  share  of  the  wealth  which  he  creates;  protect 
him  from  industrial  accidents  and  shelter  him  from 
the  physical  weakness  and  disability  which  come  from 
dirty  streets,  congested  slums,  disease-laden  tene- 
ments, exhausting  hours  and  intolerable  conditions 
of  labour;  banish  his  inefficiency  by  industrial 
training;  shelter  his  old  age  by  liberal  pensions; 
guard  his  women  from  industrial  oppression  and 
his  children  from  untimely  labour;  destroy  the 
liquor  which  is  his  besetting  temptation;  emanci- 
pate him  from  all  kinds  of  industrial  exploitation ; 
relieve  him  of  the  crushing  burden  of  a  protective 
tariff;  distribute  equitably  the  burden  of  taxation 
by  income-taxes,  inheritance-taxes,  and  land-taxes; 
confer  upon  him  the  ownership  of  all  natural 
resources  and  all  public  utilities  and  all  industrial 
enterprises  which  are  essentially  public  and  not 
private  in  their  nature ;  give  him  justice  instead  of 
charity;  crown  him  with  the  fruits  of  industrial 
as  well  as  political  democracy — do  these  things, 
and  poverty  will  disappear  like  a  wasting  pesti- 
lence! Behind  the  individual  the  social  fact — 
behind  the  man  the  social  organism, — behind  the 
member  the  body,  and  behind  the  part  the  whole — 
this  is  the  great  lesson  of  our  time ! 

And  what  does  this  discovery  of  the  social 
"background"  of  the  individual  life  not  mean  from 
the  standpoint  of  htiman  progress?  For  ages  we 
have  believed  with  the  writer  of  Deuteronomy 


124  Function  of  the  Church 

that  "the  poor  shall  never  cease  out  of  the  land"; 
and  now  we  learn  that  the  poor  shall  cease  to- 
morrow if  we  so  will !  With  this  discovery  of  our 
modem  social  science,  the  world  enters  upon  a 
new  era  of  progress  and  enlightenment — mankind 
enters  upon  a  new  field  of  conquest,  which  means 
uplift,  happiness,  abundant  life,  for  miUions  of 
wretched  human  beings — civilisation  enters  upon 
a  new  epoch  of  its  history,  more  fateful  of  human 
good  than  any  single  epoch  since  the  birth  of 
Christ.  Poverty  has  for  ages  been  the  world's 
great  curse,  the  one  ciu-se  which  society  has  not 
conquered.  It  has  been  the  hotbed  of  disease,  the 
breeding  place  of  crime,  the  destroyer  of  virtue, 
the  source  of  ignorance  and  lust,  the  foster-mother 
of  human  wretchedness,  the  one  awful  hell  of 
torment  that  really  exists  within  the  universe  of 
God.  It  is  the  poor  who  suffer  and  miserably  die. 
It  is  the  poor  who  know  not  happiness  or  peace. 
It  is  the  sons  of  the  poor  who  crowd  our  courts, 
tenant  our  jails,  and  occupy  our  gallows;  it  is  the 
daughters  of  the  poor  who  fall  victims  to  vice  and 
prey  like  harpies  upon  the  souls  of  men.  Poverty 
is  the  one  dark  side  of  modem  society,  the  one 
monstrous  ill  which  civilisation  has  not  over- 
thrown. Cannibalism  has  been  banished  to  the 
remote  comers  of  the  earth;  human  sacrifice  no 
longer  pollutes  the  altars  of  the  gods;  chattel 
slavery  has  been  destroyed ;  the  despotism  of  kings 
and  bishops  crumbles  before  the  assaults  of  politi- 
cal and  religious  liberty;  war  shall  soon  cease  and 


The  Social  Question  125 

the  rumours  of  war  be  stilled;  disease  is  fleeing 
before  the  advances  of  modem  medicine.  Only 
poverty  is  left  untouched  in  all  its  pristine  horror; 
and  now  this  shall  go,  we  are  told,  the  way  of 
every  other  ill.  And  all  because  we  have  at  last 
discovered  the  true  nature  of  the  individual  life — 
all  because  we  have  at  last  uncovered  the  essential 
relation  existing  between  the  individual  man  and 
the  social  whole — all  because  we  have  at  last 
discerned  the  social  backgroimd  of  individual 
phenomena! 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  SOCIAL  QUESTION  IN  RELIGION 

HERE,  in  this  study  of  the  new  methods  of  treat- 
ing physical  disease  and  material  poverty, 
do  we  see  the  practical  consequences  of  our  new 
conception  of  the  individual.  Our  thought  of 
individuality  has  suddenly  become  socialised,  and 
with  this  has  come  inevitably  the  socialisation  of 
all  of  our  practical  relationships  with  the  indi- 
vidual. In  medicine,  in  philanthropy,  in  education, 
in  politics,  we  have  learned  to  see  what  Dr.  Cabot 
calls  "the  background"  of  each  individual,  and 
thus  have  learned  that  the  environing  society  and 
not  the  isolated  personality  presents  the  immediate 
point  of  contact  and  the  real  problem  of  action  in 
every  enterprise  of  redemption.  Here  is  a  man  who 
is  ill.  Formerly,  as  we  have  seen,  the  physician 
studied  only  the  man  himself — investigated  his 
symptoms  and  applied  his  remedies.  To  the 
modern  physician,  however,  the  sick  man  is  him- 
self only  a  symptom  of  the  larger  "disease  of  the 
body  politic";  and  he  proceeds  therefore  to  apply 
his  remedies,  in  the  form  not  of  drugs  but  of  cam- 
paigns for  social  reconstruction,  to  "the  social- 
economic  system  under  which  we  live."  Here  is 
a  man  who  is  poor.    Even  to-day,  in  most  quar- 

126 


Social  Question  in  Religion       127 

ters,  the  organised  charity  agencies  give  the  man 
a  friend  to  study  his  individual  habits,  uncover  his 
individual  weaknesses  and  vices,  and  by  curing 
these  seek  to  cure  his  material  distress.  Now  how- 
ever we  are  beginning  to  learn  that  in  every  prob- 
lem of  poverty  there  is  involved  the  infinitely 
larger  problem  of  the  social  organism;  and  our 
more  efficient  and  courageous  charity- workers, 
dissatisfied  to  deal  longer  merely  with  "cases," 
are  turning  rather  impatiently  to  the  social  con- 
ditions which  produce  "cases"  as  surely  as  a  dung- 
heap  produces  flies. 

And  this  brings  us  directly  to  the  problem  with 
which  this  book  is  immediately  concerned.  For  what 
is  true  in  all  other  fields  of  human  endeavour  is  true 
also  in  the  great  field  of  organised  religion.  The 
new  ideas  of  our  time  in  regard  to  the  individual 
have  made  necessary,  as  we  have  seen,  a  complete 
revolution  in  our  whole  attitude  toward  human  life 
and  the  problem  of  its  redemption,  and  have  wholly 
changed  the  direction  of  our  manifold  activities. 
And  it  was  these  same  "new  ideas,"  I  believe, 
which  Dr.  Eliot  had  in  mind  when  he  declared 
that  their  coming  had  modified  "not  only  the 
actual  work  done  by  the  churches,  but  the  whole 
conception  of  the  function  of  the  churches."  In 
religion,  that  is,  exactly  as  in  politics,  industry, 
education,  and  philanthropy,  our  attention  must 
be  shifted  from  the  individual  to  society — from 
the  members  of  the  body  to  the  body  itself;  and 
this  means  as  great  a  revolution  in  the  function  of 


128  Function  of  the  Church 

the  church  as  in  that  of  every  other  established 
institution. 

(a)  sin,  and  its  causes 

For  nineteen  hundred  years,  as  we  have  seen, 
the  church  has  been  concerned  with  men  and 
women  as  individuals.  These  men  and  women 
have  presented  the  church  with  the  one  great 
problem  of  sin,  as  they  have  presented  medicine 
with  the  problem  of  disease,  philanthropy  with 
the  problem  of  economic  dependence,  and  educa- 
tion with  the  problem  of  ignorance;  and  back  of 
the  fact  itself,  of  course,  the  ultimate  question  of 
its  causes. 

(i)  Sin  Individual — Total  Depravity 

Obsessed  with  its  philosophy  of  individualism, 
which  appeared  as  an  extreme  reaction  from  that 
consciousness  of  social  solidarity  which  was  one 
of  the  glories  of  ancient  pagan  thought,  and  which 
has  dominated  every  remotest  phase  of  thought 
throughout  the  entire  history  of  our  Christian 
civilisation  even  until  now,  the  church  has  sought 
for  the  origin  of  this  sin  within  the  individual  him- 
self, just  as  we  have  seen  that  the  physician  simi- 
larly sought  for  the  origin  of  disease  and  the 
philanthropist  for  the  explanation  of  poverty.  If 
the  individual  is  vicious  and  immoral,  then  there  is 
something  wrong  with*  himself  as  an  individual — 
just  as  there  is  supposedly  something  wrong  with 


Social  Question  in  Religion       129 

him  as  an  individual  if  he  is  physically  disordered 
or  economically  poor.  Indeed,  looking  exclusively 
at  this  isolated  individual  and  never  for  a  moment 
thinking  to  look  at  his  industrial,  political,  and 
social  "background,"  and  seeing  how  miserably 
weak  and  vicious  he  really  was,  the  church  was 
driven  to  devising  the  doctrine  of  total  depravity 
as  the  only  possible  and  adequate  explanation  of 
the  facts.  Human  nature,  the  church  has  insisted, 
is  vile  and  degraded.  It  is  natural  for  a  man  to  do 
wrong,  and  unnatural  for  him  to  do  right.  The 
natural  man  is  selfish,  mean,  sensual,  quarrelsome, 
and  cruel.  He  believes  in  falsehood,  and  not  in 
truth ;  he  practises  deceit,  and  not  honour ;  he  hates 
his  neighbour,  and  refuses  to  love  him.  The 
upright  and  noble  life,  on  the  other  hand,  is  wholly 
unnatural  and  can  be  achieved  only  by  a  kind  of 
miracle.  If  a  man  would  be  good,  he  must  not 
follow  the  native  instincts  of  his  own  spirit,  which 
are  sure  to  lead  him  astray,  but  he  must  be  born 
again  and  be  baptised  not  of  water  but  of  the 
grace  of  God.  The  old  Adam,  or  the  natural  man, 
must  die;  and  the  new  Adam,  or  the  unnatural 
man,  be  bom.  If  we  would  live  a  good,  true,  and 
pure  life,  we  must  become  something  other  than 
we  are,  either  through  the  saving  influence  of  the 
church  or  through  the  atoning  power  of  Jesus 
Christ.  We  must  rise  superior  to  the  natural 
depravity  of  human  nature — we  must  "put  off" 
our  human  nature  altogether  and  assume  an- 
other nature  which  is  divine — we  must  be 
9 


130  Function  of  the  Church 

renewed  by  the  transforming  of  our  spirits.  No 
language  is  adequate  to  describe  the  extremes  to 
which  this  conception  of  the  essential  depravity 
of  unspoiled  human  nature  has  been  carried. 
Bishop  Heber,  surveying  the  world,  in  his  famous 
hymn,  "from  Greenland's  icy  mountains  (to) 
India's  coral  strand,"  found  that 


[".  .  .  every  prospect  pleases 
And  only  man  is  vile." 


"Toads"  and  "worms,"  "vipers"  and  "scorpions" 
are  some  of  the  attractive  phrases  applied  to  men 
and  women  by  the  classic  theologians  of  the 
church.  And  even  the  innocent  baby,  sleeping 
quietly  in  its  mother's  arms,  has  been  regarded  as 
a  thing  accursed  of  God.  This  conception  of 
human  nature,  as  it  is  thus  defined  without  quali- 
fication of  any  kind,  seems  almost  blasphemous 
to  us  to-day;  and  yet  we  ought  never  to  for- 
get that  this  is  the  only  logical  hypothesis  of  a 
thorough-going  philosophy  of  individualism,  like 
that  of  classic  Christianity.  Once  start  out  with 
"that  abstraction  unknown  to  experience,"  a 
separate  individual,  devoid  of  essential  social 
relationships,  and  nothing  else  is  adequate  to 
explain  the  undoubted  facts  of  human  experience. 
It  should  further  be  noted  that  it  is  just  this 
conception  of  humanity  which  lies  at  the  bottom 
of  all  the  persecutions  and  oppressions,  all  the 
slaveries  and  tyrannies,  which  have  been  since 


Social  Question  in  Religion       131 

the  world  began.  Says  Henry  D.  Lloyd,  in  his 
"Man,  the  Social  Creator":  "The  people  have 
been  degraded  and  enslaved  by  the  theologies 
which  have  told  them  that  they  were  bad,  and 
that,  do  their  utmost,  they  could  not  organise 
their  lives  on  any  nobler  belief."  It  is  this  con- 
ception of  the  essential  evil  of  human  nature  which 
has  placed  princes  upon  their  thrones  and  popes 
upon  their  curule  chairs,  which  has  perpetuated 
the  tyranny  of  church  and  state,  and  prostituted 
the  common  people  to  the  wilful  authority  of 
emperor  and  priest.  It  is  this  conception  which 
has  established  and  maintained  slavery — both 
the  chattel  slavery  of  yesterday  and  the  industrial 
slavery  of  to-day.  It  is  this  conception  which  has 
burdened  man,  degraded  woman,  and  robbed  the 
little  child  of  freedom  and  delight.  It  is  this  con- 
ception which  has  built  our  prisons,  forged  our 
chains,  reared  our  crosses  and  our  gibbets.  It  is 
this  conception  which  has  divided  mankind  into 
the  few  upon  the  one  side  who  are  rich  and  strong 
and  nobly  bom,  and  the  many  upon  the  other  side 
who  are  poor  and  weak  and  meanly  born.  It  is 
this  conception,  in  the  last  analysis,  which  has 
persuaded  men  to  believe  that  they  must  organise 
society  upon  the  basis  of  hate  and  not  of  love,  of 
war  and  not  of  peace,  of  privilege  and  not  of 
brotherhood;  and  in  their  political  and  industrial 
existence  together,  never  obey  any  higher  law  than 
that  of  appetite  or  passion.  "All  the  wickedness 
and  cruelty  and  waste,"  says  Mr.  Lloyd  again,  "of 


132  Function  of  the  Church 

wars,  of  despotisms,  and  of  the  popular  slaveries 
of  the  world  of  common  toil,  are  kept  vested  by 
the  atheistical  doctrine  that  the  heart  of  humanity 
is  so  bad  that  Tennyson's  golden  year  can  never 
come  when  'the  good  of  all  shall  be  the  rule  of 
each."* 

(2)  Sin  Social 

To-day,  however,  all  this  is  changed  by  our  new 
conception  of  the  individual  as  a  "social  creature." 
These  dreadful  facts  of  weakness,  shame,  and  vice, 
which  we  commonly  sum  up  in  the  one  word,  sin, 
are  just  the  same  to-day  as  they  have  always  been. 
The  reality  of  human  depravity  cannot  be  denied 
or  escaped.  But  with  our  new  conception  of  the 
individual,  a  new  conception  of  this  depravity  is 
now  possible.  No  longer  do  we  look  merely  to  the 
individual  himself  for  the  explanation  of  these 
facts.  Behind  him  we  see  his  "background."  We 
see  him  a  part  of  the  social  whole — a  member  of 
an  organic  body.  And  we  pass  from  the  man  him- 
self to  the  remoter  realities  of  heredity  and  envi- 
ronment for  the  sources  of  his  sin.  Our  social 
vision,  in  other  words,  turns  our  problem  com- 
pletely about.  Here  are  the  facts  of  moral  deprav- 
ity to  explain.  Instead  now  of  beginning  with  the 
bad  man  and  thus  justifying  the  social  tyrannies 
of  institutional  control  which  subdue  and  bind 
him,  we  begin  with  those  social  tyrannies  them- 
selves and  explain  thereby  the  bad  man.    In  other 


Social  Question  in  Religion       133 

words,  instead  of  assuming  the  hypothesis  that 
man  is  naturally  bad,  we  assume  the  equally  credi- 
table hypothesis  that  he  is  naturally  good;  and 
find  the  explanation  of  his  weakness  and  his  sin 
partly  in  heredity  no  doubt,  but  principally  in  the 
repressive  and  corrupting  influences  of  his  political 
and  industrial  environment.  This,  as  we  have 
seen,  is  the  inevitable  point  of  view  of  the  philo- 
sophy of  socialisation  wherever  it  has  been  worked 
out.  Dr.  Cabot  tells  us,  without  qualification, 
that  "the  root-cause  of  most  of  the  sickness  that 
(a  doctor)  is  called  upon  to  help"  is  found  outside 
the  patient  altogether  in  "social  conditions,  such 
as  vice,  ignorance,  overcrowding,  sweat-shops,  and 
poverty."  And  what  can  this  mean  but  that,  if 
"social  conditions"  were  what  they  could  be  and 
ought  to  be,  the  great  majority  of  people  would 
not  be  sick  at  all? — in  other  words,  that  the  normal 
physical  condition  is  strength  and  not  weakness, 
health  and  not  disease!  We  find  this  very  fact 
stated  flatly  by  Dr.  William  J.  Robinson,  in  his 
"Never-Told  Stories,"  where  he  affirms  that  90% 
of  all  illness  is  totally  unnecessary;  and  draws  an 
imaginative  picture  of  a  model  social  community, 
where  the  10%  of  illness  which  is  inevitable,  as  due 
to  old  age,  accidents,  or  individual  indiscretion,  is 
so  slight  in  extent  and  intensity  as  not  to  consti- 
tute any  problem  at  all.  In  other  words,  say  the 
physicians — make  this  world  a  decent  place  in 
which  to  live,  and  disease  will  practically  dis- 
appear!— and  they  are  proving  their  thesis  in  such 


134  Function  of  the  Church 

conspicuous  cases  as  cholera,  small-pox,  yellow- 
fever,  typhoid-fever,  and  tuberculosis !  The  same 
truth  is  set  forth,  as  we  have  seen,  by  the  up-to- 
date  charity  worker  as  regards  economic  depend- 
ence. Banish  the  unjust  political  and  industrial 
conditions  of  organised  society,  they  say,  and 
poverty  will  likewise  disappear.  The  normal  man, 
in  other  words,  is  not  lazy  and  extravagant,  intem- 
perate and  vicious,  but  he  is  industrious,  prudent, 
temperate,  and  careful.  He  can  be  trusted  to  take 
care  of  himself,  if  he  has  an  equal  opportunity  with 
every  other  man.  Says  Miss  Lillian  Brandt,  a 
social  worker  of  recognized  authority,  "When 
exploitation  of  laboiu*  and  defective  government 
regulation  have  been  eliminated,  the  irreducible 
minimum  of  natural  depravity,  moral  defects,  or 
whatever  else  it  may  be  called,  will  not  be  large 
enough  to  constitute  poverty  a  serious  problem." 

(o)  Human  Nature  Good,  Not  Bad 

Now  what  is  true  of  the  new  science  of  preven- 
tive medicine  and  the  new  philanthropy  of  social 
reform,  is  true  also,  I  must  believe,  of  the  new 
religion  of  socialisation.  As  the  physician  assumes 
that,  under  proper  social  conditions,  only  the 
rarely  exceptional  individual  would  be  ill,  and  as 
the  charity  worker  assumes  that,  under  these  same 
conditions,  only  the  rarely  exceptional  individual 
would  be  poor,  so  also  must  the  prophet  of  modem 
religion  argue  that,  under  these  same  conditions 


Social  Question  in  Religion       135 

again,  only  the  rarely  exceptional  individual  would 
be  morally  depraved.  We  must  believe,  in  the 
light  of  the  new  social  philosophy  of  our  time,  that 
human  nature  is  good  and  not  bad,  and  that  the 
native  instincts  of  the  soul  therefore  are  uplifting 
and  not  degrading.  We  must  declare,  with  the 
Chinese  philosopher,  Mencius,  that  "man's  nature 
to  good  is  like  the  tendency  of  water  to  flow  down- 
ward." We  must  affirm  with  Christ  that  love, 
and  not  hate,  is  the  original  law  of  social  life.  Of 
course,  we  cannot  deny  the  facts  that  are  forced 
upon  us  by  the  careful  observation  of  the  seamy 
side  of  life.  It  is  true  that  men  lie  and  cheat  and 
rob,  quarrel  and  fight  and  kill.  Selfishness  and 
deceit  and  animalism  are  plainly  enough  present 
in  human  nature.  All  too  evident  is  it  that  the 
history  of  the  past  has  been  the  long  and  dreary 
record  of  crime  and  bloodshed,  cruelty  and  suffer- 
ing ;  and  that  even  now,  after  centuries  of  develop- 
ment, we  live  in  a  world  which  is  anything  but 
civilised.  But  these  facts  no  more  prove  that  man 
is  depraved,  or  that  human  nature  is  bad,  or  that 
goodness  is  not  native  to  the  normal  life  of  the 
soul,  than  the  present-day  ravages  of  disease  mean 
that  man  is  at  bottom  physically  corrupt,  or  the 
awful  poverty  of  every  age  means  that  man  is 
necessarily  improvident  and  lazy.  On  the  con- 
trary, these  facts  are  not  at  all  the  essential  facts 
of  human  phenomena.  Look  backward  upon  the 
dark  eras  of  the  ages  past,  and  see  the  rays  of  truth 
and  love  gleaming  faintly  in  the  darkness,  and 


136  Function  of  the  Church 

shining  ever  more  and  more  unto  the  perfect  day. 
See  the  numberless  men  who  have  been  true  and 
women  who  have  been  pure,  amid  infinite  difficul- 
ties and  myriad  temptations.  See  the  work  that 
has  been  done,  the  service  that  has  been  rendered, 
the  love  that  has  been  spent.  See  the  pain  that  has 
been  endured  and  the  lives  that  have  been  sacri- 
ficed, as  the  purchase  price  of  freedom.  See  "the 
goodly  fellowship  of  the  prophets,  the  noble  army 
of  martyrs,  and  the  glorious  company  of  the 
apostles."  See  how,  through  all  centuries,  love 
has  been  growing  stronger,  unselfishness  more 
common,  sacrifice  more  natural.  See  how,  little 
by  little,  the  woman  and  the  child  and  the  labourer, 
all  the  last  ones,  are  becoming  first,  and  all  the 
weak  ones,  strong.  See  how,  in  spite  of  crime  and 
treachery  and  sin,  in  spite  of  cruelty  and  blood- 
shed and  persecution,  the  progress  of  mankind  has 
still  been  moving  onward  and  upward  forever. 
Human  nature,  you  say,  is  bad!  A  great  steam- 
ship, struggling  with  a  mighty  gale,  comes  upon 
a  sister-ship  in  distress.  Instantly  the  captain 
brings  his  vessel  to,  and  calls  upon  his  crew  for 
volunteers  to  man  a  boat  and  save  the  passengers 
of  the  sinking  ship.  At  once,  every  member  of  the 
crew  leaps  forward  and  fights  with  his  comrades 
for  a  chance  to  risk  his  life  upon  the  boiling  seas. 
That  is  human  nature!  Two  men,  cleaning  the 
interior  of  an  engine  boiler,  are  suddenly  over- 
whelmed by  a  blast  of  live  steam.  Both  leap  for 
the  door.    One  reaches  there  first,  then  steps  aside 


Social  Question  in  Religion       137 

and  pushes  his  fellow  through,  with  the  words, 
"You  first,  Jim — you've  got  the  wife  and  the 
kids" — and  then,  at  the  next  instant,  falls  dead 
upon  the  iron  floor.  That  is  human  nature!  A 
woman,  dying  of  hunger  and  cold  in  a  wretched 
tenement,  is  discovered  by  chance  by  a  neighbour, 
who  goes  immediately  to  her  own  cheerless  room, 
takes  her  last  hod-full  of  coal  and  her  last  crust 
of  bread,  and  gives  them  to  her  whose  need  is 
greater  than  her  own.    That  is  human  nature ! 

"  The  picket  frozen  on  duty, 

The  mother  starved  for  her  brood, 

Socrates  drinking  the  hemlock. 
And  Jesus  on  the  rood. 

And  thousands  who,  nameless  and  humble. 
The  straight,  hard  pathway  trod — " 

That  is  human  nature !  It  is  natural  for  men  to  be 
men  and  not  animals, — children  of  God  and  not 
creatures  of  earth.  Said  William  EUery  Channing, 
in  words  that  can  never  be  forgotten: 

I  cannot  but  pity  the  man  who  recognises  nothing 
Godlike  in  his  own  nature.  I  see  the  marks  of  God 
in  the  heavens  and  the  earth,  but  how  much  more  in 
a  liberal  intellect,  in  magnanimity,  in  unconquerable 
rectitude,  in  a  philanthropy  which  forgives  every 
wrong  and  which  never  despairs  of  the  cause  of  Christ 
and  human  virtue.  I  do  and  I  must  reverence  human 
nature.  Neither  the  sneers  of  a  worldly  scepticism 
nor  the  groans  of  a  gloomy  theology  disturb  my  faith 
in  its  Godlike  powers  and  tendencies.    I  know  how  it 


138  Function  of  the  Church 

is  despised  and  how  it  has  been  oppressed,  how  civil 
and  rehgious  establishments  have  conspired  for  ages 
to  crush  it.  I  know  its  history.  I  shut  my  eyes  on 
none  of  its  weaknesses  and  crimes.  I  understand 
the  proofs  by  which  despotism  demonstrates  that 
man  is  a  wild  beast,  in  want  of  a  master,  and  only 
safe  in  chains.  But  injured,  trampled,  and  scorned 
as  our  nature  is,  I  still  turn  to  it  with  intense  sym- 
pathy and  strong  hope.  The  signature  of  its  origin 
and  its  end  is  impressed  too  deeply  to  be  ever  wholly 
effaced.  I  bless  it  for  its  kind  affections,  for  its  strong 
and  tender  love.  I  honour  it  for  its  struggles  against 
oppression,  for  its  growth  and  progress  under  the 
weight  of  so  many  chains  and  prejudices,  for  its 
achievements  in  science  and  art,  and  still  more  for 
its  examples  of  heroic  and  saintly  virtue.  These  are 
the  marks  of  a  divine  origin  and  the  pledges  of  a 
celestial  inheritance. 

(b)  "Sin  is  Misery;  Misery  is  Poverty;  the  Antidote 
of  Poverty  is  Income" 

This,  and  not  the  other,  is  the  truth  regarding 
human  nature.  And  this  means,  if  it  means  any- 
thing at  all,  that,  in  the  majority  of  cases,  a  man 
is  depraved  for  the  same  reason  that  he  is  sick  or 
poor — because  of  "the  social-economic  system 
under  which  (he)  lives."  Look  out  upon  the  great 
hordes  of  the  weary  and  the  heavy-laden,  the  men 
and  the  women  and  the  little  children  who  toil 
from  early  morning  until  late  at  night  for  the 
miserable  pittance  of  a  starvation  wage,  the  deni- 
zens of  the  slums  and  tenements  and  saloons,  the 


Social  Question  in  Religion       139 

vagrants  and  the  paupers,  the  outcast,  the  criminal 
and  the  insane.  Look  out,  I  say,  upon  these  miser- 
able and  unhappy  people — and  who  dares  say  that 
they  are  bad,  that  they  suffer  because  they  are 
depraved  and  corrupt,  that  they  are  reaping  only 
what  they  have  themselves  sown?  Behind  all  this 
mass  of  wretchedness,  I  have  no  doubt,  is  many  a 
tale  of  individual  weakness  and  sin.  But  high 
above  every  personal  lapse  of  this  kind  there  looms 
the  awful  fact  that  most  of  these  men  and  women, 
if  not  all,  never  had  a  chance — that  the  door  of 
opportunity  was  locked  and  barred  against  them — 
that  society  has  robbed  them,  enslaved  them, 
exploited  them,  bound  upon  their  stooping  shoul- 
ders grievous  burdens  and  heavy  to  be  borne. 
If  these  unhappy  thousands  are  inefficient,  it  is 
because  they  have  been  neglected  by  an  indifferent 
and  disordered  society.  If  they  are  sick,  it  is 
because  they  have  been  forced  to  live  in  tenements 
and  cellars,  and  been  denied  fresh  air,  sunlight,  and 
nourishing  food.  If  they  are  poor,  it  is  because  they 
have  been  denied  the  full  product  of  their  labour.  If 
they  are  crippled,  it  is  because  society  has  bound 
them  upon  its  whirling  wheels  of  industry  and 
broken  them  to  pieces.  If  they  are  insane,  it  is 
because  they  have  been  worked  to  the  point  of 
exhaustion  and  denied  all  physical  recreation  and 
moral  inspiration.  If  they  are  criminal,  it  is 
because  society  has  abused  them  and  hunted  them 
and  outlawed  them,  until  like  a  cornered  rat  they 
have  torn  and  rent  the  hand  that  is  lifted  against 


140  Function  of  the  Church 

them.  These  people  are  naturally  good — they 
were  once  as  innocent  and  responsive  as  the  child- 
ren of  our  own  hearts.  But  they  have  been 
persecuted  and  tortured  out  of  all  human  sem- 
blance, until  they  are  in  reality  little  better  than 
animals.  Give  these  people  a  chance  from  baby- 
hood up.  Open  to  them  the  doors  of  opportunity. 
Share  with  them  the  favours  now  granted  to  the 
favoured  few.  Strike  from  their  limbs  the  chains 
of  an  unjust  economic  system.  Train  their  hands 
that  they  may  be  efficient  and  their  minds  that 
they  may  be  enlightened.  Give  them  for  their 
labour  all  and  not  merely  a  part  of  what  that 
labour  is  worth.  Make  it  possible  for  them  to  live 
in  houses  that  are  decent,  in  streets  that  are  clean, 
in  cities  that  are  uncongested.  Free  them  from 
the  bondage  of  excessive  hours  of  toil  and  the 
peril  of  industrial  accident  and  disease.  Shelter 
their  old  age  and  foster  them  in  the  hours  of  their 
misfortune.  Relieve  them  from  "the  civil  and 
reHgious  estabhshments "  that  "conspire"  to 
"crush"  them.  Treat  them  as  brothers,  not  as 
slaves — as  comrades,  not  as  labour  units — as  fel- 
low-men, not  as  pack-animals  or  machines.  Be- 
lieve in  them,  trust  them,  love  them,  serve  them, 
emancipate  them,  co-operate  with  them.  This 
do! — and  lo!  the  ills  of  life  will  vanish  and  the 
terrors  of  society  be  no  more.  Our  insane  asylums 
will  be  dismantled  and  our  prisons  destroyed. 
Our  police-force  will  be  disbanded  and  our  courts 
closed.    Health  will  overcome  disease,  plenty  will 


Social  Question  in  Religion       141 

come  in  place  of  poverty,  and  virtue  will  conquer 
sin.  Violence  will  no  more  be  heard  in  the  land, 
desolation  or  destruction  within  its  borders.  Wars 
shall  cease  and  rumours  of  wars  be  stilled.  There 
shall  be  heard  no  more  the  voice  of  weeping  and 
crying.  They  shall  build  houses  and  inhabit  them  ; 
they  shall  plant  vineyards  and  eat  of  the  fruit  of 
them.  They  shall  not  build  and  another  inhabit; 
they  shall  not  plant  and  another  eat.  They  shall 
not  labour  in  vain,  nor  bring  forth  for  calamity; 
for  they  are  the  blessed  sons  of  the  Lord — ^yea,  and 
their  children  with  them! 

Here  then  is  the  thesis  which  the  socialised  con- 
ception of  the  individual  forces  upon  the  religion 
of  our  time.  Man  is  essentially  good,  and  not  bad ; 
and  his  sin,  like  his  disease  and  his  poverty,  is  to 
be  attributed  primarily  to  the  "social-economic 
conditions"  of  his  environment.  This  is  the  doc- 
trine of  Prof.  Charles  P.  Fagnani,  of  the  Union 
Theological  Seminary,  New  York,  who  says, 
"Human  nature  being  fundamentally  good,  if 
things  are  wrong  the  trouble  must  be  with  society, 
with  our  maladjustments,  with  unfavourable 
environment."^  And  it  is  this  same  startling  idea 
which  is  set  forth  in  convincing  terms  in  Prof. 
Simon  N.  Patten's  new  book  on  "The  Social  Basis 
of  Religion."  The  modern  economist,  he  says, 
assumes  that  "man  is  good  and  nature  perfect." 
This  means  that  the  cause  of  evil  must  be  found 
somewhere  else   than  in  either  man  or  nature. 

*  Report  of  Sagamore  Sociological  Conference  (1910). 


142  Function  of  the  Church 

Nothing  else  is  left  but  social  misery.  "Sin,"  says 
Prof.  Patten,  "is  a  consequence  of  misery. 
Remove  misery,  and  sin  will  disappear.  It  has  no 
independent  existence  apart  from  the  misery  that 
bad  conditions  create.  It  is  but  a  step  from  this," 
he  continues,  "to  the  thought  that  misery  is  the 
result  of  poverty,  and  thus  dependent  upon  indus- 
trial conditions.  Sin,  misery,  and  poverty  thus 
become  one  problem.  ...All  three  can  be  wiped  out 
by  changes  in  industrial  conditions."  Further  on 
in  his  book,  he  is  even  more  explicit. 

Evil  and  sin  [he  states]  are  either  the  results 
of  defects  in  human  nature,  and  hence  without  a 
remedy,  or  they  are  due  to  external  conditions  that 
mar  human  nature  by  producing  abnormalities.  If 
the  latter  view  is  accepted,  the  word  "economic  "  must 
be  substituted  for  "external"  in  describing  the  con- 
ditions that  originate  evil  and  sin.  While  many  good 
things  are  natural,  most  bad  things  are  economic. 
The  good  is  also  the  outcome  of  general  laws;  the 
bad  is  the  result  of  local  conditions  that  may  be 
altered.  Evils  thus  have  specific  causes  that  may  be 
isolated  and  removed.  They  never  arise  from  the 
general  laws  of  nature  nor  from  the  native  impulses  of 
men.  Neither  nature  nor  man  needs  to  have  his 
laws  altered.  Nature  is  beneficent  and  man  is  good; 
they  become  malignant  forces  under  local  conditions 
that  prevent  the  full  expression  of  natural  laws  and 
keep  men  from  following  their  better  impulses.  To 
remove  the  temptation  to  sin  means  to  do  away  with 
starvation,  poverty,  disease,  overwork,  and  bad  condi- 
tions which  depress  workers  and  turn  virtue  into  vice. 


Social  Question  in  Religion       143 

All  of  which  he  sums  up  in  the  striking 
aphorism,  "Sin  is  misery;  misery  is  poverty;  the 
antidote  of  poverty  is  income."  This,  he  con- 
cludes, "is  the  message  of  hope  delivered  by 
economic  and  natural  theology  when  their  prin- 
ciples are  blended  in  one  discipline.  This  is  the 
method  which  should  be  used  in  determining  what 
religion  is  and  how  it  works."* 

All  this  soimds  so  strange  in  the  ears  of  those 
who  have  so  long  been  familiar  with  the  appeals  of 
the  religion  of  the  traditional  individualism,  that 
it  may  not  be  amiss  to  cite  such  concrete  examples 
of  crime  or  sin  as  may  illustrate  this  doctrine  of 
social  or  economic  origin. 

(i)  Criminality 

Early  in  May,  191 1,  there  appeared  in  the  New 
York  newspapers  an  authorised  statement  by 
Judge  Thomas  C.  O'Sullivan,  of  the  Court  of 
General  Sessions,  on  the  remarkable  increase  in 
crime  among  young  men  in  the  city.  In  explaining 
this  condition,  the  Judge  laid  some  emphasis  upon 
"the  lack  of  moral  or  religious  instruction  in  the 
schools";  but  "the  underlying  cause,"  he  said, 

'  "Under  the  whole  scheme  (of  Plato's  Republic)  there  lies  the 
assumption  that  much  can  be  done  to  abolish  spiritual  evils  by 
the  abolition  of  those  material  conditions  in  connection  with 
which  they  are  found.  .  .  .  Because  material  conditions  are  con- 
comitant with  spiritual  evils,  they  seem  to  him  largely  their 
cause,  and  since  to  abolish  the  cause  is  to  abolish  the  effect,  he 
sets  himself  to  a  thorough  reform  of  the  material  conditions  of 
life."— Barker's  "  Political  Thought  of  Plato  and  Aristotle." 


144  Function  of  the  Church 

"was  the  general  reduction  of  wages  throughout 
the  country,  following  the  panic  of  1907,  whereby 
the  workers  were  deprived  of  their  customary 
comforts."  Enlarging  upon  this  explanation, 
Judge  O' Sullivan  is  reported  as  saying: 

This  condition  is  a  sign  of  the  times.  The  whole 
people  are  living  beyond  their  means.  The  children 
have  been  taught  to  believe  that  they  are  entitled  to 
all  the  comforts  and  luxuries  their  parents  can  give 
them.  .  .  .  Now  labour  is  not  getting  a  proper  return. 
Prices  for  all  commodities  have  gone  up  while  wages 
have  remained  practically  stationary.  In  conse- 
quence, families  cannot  command  now  the  comforts 
they  are  used  to.  Thus  we  get  the  present  tendency 
of  the  people  to  live  beyond  their  means.  The  eco- 
nomic condition  of  a  higher  cost  of  living  should  be 
corrected.  No  doubt  the  tendency  of  young  men  to 
shun  manual  laboiu*  and  the  trades  (and  thus  drift 
into  crime)  is  due  to  a  realisation  of  the  inadequacy 
,of  the  wages  in  those  occupations. 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  this  long-experienced 
Judge,  in  his  diagnosis  of  crime,  says  nothing 
about  the  personal  responsibility  of  the  criminals 
themselves.  The  nearest  he  comes  to  the  alleging 
of  any  personal  responsibility  is  his  charge  that 
parents  have  taught  their  children  unwisely. 
Fundamentally,  however,  he  reverts  for  his  expla- 
nation of  the  situation  to  the  "social-economic 
system,"  as  indeed  do  nearly  all  students  of  crimi- 
nology at  the  present  time.    A  striking  confirma- 


Social  Question  in  Religion       145 

tion  of  this  is  found  in  a  recent  article  by  Mr. 
William   E.    McLennan,    of   Buffalo,    who   says: 
**  That  there  are  many  causes  of  crime  goes  without 
saying.     Some  criminals  are  insane;  some — pos- 
sibly ten  per  cent. — are  criminals  by  birth;  it  may 
even  be  shown  that  there  is  a  disease  of  crime. 
But  the  crime  of  the  great  majority  is  due  to  the 
conditions    under    which    they    live — what    we 
roughly   call   environment."'     Similar,   although 
comparatively   moderate,    is    the    testimony    of 
Senator  Robert  M.  La  Follette  in  his  "Autobi- 
ography."    Surveying  his  record  as  district  at- 
torney, he  says:  "I  do  not  believe  that  I  should 
make  as  good  a  prosecutor  now  as  I  was  then.     I 
saw  just  two  things  then:  the  law  and  the  indi- 
vidual criminal.     I  believe  I  broke  the  record  for 
convictions  in  Dane  County.     I  worked  the  sheriff 
half  to  death.  .  .  .  Since  then  I  have  come  to  have 
a  little  different  point  of  view  regarding  crime.     I 
see  that   the  individual  criminal  is   not  always 
wholly  to  blame;  that  many  crimes  grow  directly 
out  of  the  sins  and  injustices  of  society."    And 
what  could  be  more  impressive  in  this  regard  than 
the  article   by  James   Devin,  medical  officer  in 
H.  M.  Prison,  Glasgow,  in  the  July  (191 1)  num- 
ber of  the  "Hibbert  Journal,"  on  "The  Criminal, 
the  Criminologist,  and  the  Public,"  every  word  of 
which  is  an  impassioned  plea  for  a  new  criminology, 
based  on  the   conception  of  crime  as  "a  social 
question,"    and   the   criminal   as  "a  member  of 

'Article  in  "The  Survey,"  July,  191 1. 


146  Function  of  the  Church 

society"?  "If  the  majority  of  prisoners,"  says 
this  writer,  "had  half  as  good  a  position  as  those 
set  out  to  instruct  them,  there  is  good  ground  for 
the  beHef  that  they  would  as  seldom  offend  against 
the  law."  Here  are  only  a  few  of  the  abundant 
evidences  of  the  new  point  of  view  upon  this  sub- 
ject which  is  appearing  to-day  in  the  most  unex- 
pected quarters — evidences  which  could  be  a 
hundred  times  confirmed  by  extracts  from  the 
more  scientific  treatises  in  criminology  which  are 
now  so  numerous;  and  all  pointing  to  the  same 
conclusion,  that  we  cannot  begin  to  understand 
the  problem  of  crime,  to  say  nothing  of  solving  it, 
until  we  have  gone  behind  the  individual  offender 
and  brought  ourselves  face  to  face  with  his 
"  social  background." 

(2)  Juvenile  Delinquency 

An  even  more  impressive  demonstration  of  this 
truth  is  found  in  the  field  of  juvenile  crime.  Some 
time  ago,  at  a  social  welfare  exhibit  in  New  York 
City,  I  saw  a  large  map  of  the  borough  of  Man- 
hattan, upon  which  was  graphically  depicted  the 
geographical  distribution  of  the  twelve  thousand 
cases  of  juvenile  delinquency  which  come  before 
the  Juvenile  Court  of  this  borough  on  an  average 
every  year.  Each  case  was  indicated  by  a  black- 
headed  pin  inserted  upon  the  map  at  the  point 
where  the  delinquent  boy  or  girl  lived  at  the  time 
of  the  arrest.     One  fact  immediately  impressed 


Social  Question  in  Religion       147 

itself  upon  my  mind  as  I  examined  this  map — 
namely,  that  the  pins  were  bunched  in  certain 
localities  covering  only  a  very  small  portion  of  the 
total  area,  while  all  the  rest  of  the  map  was  prac- 
tically free,  only  here  and  there  an  isolated  pin 
rearing  its  lonely  head.  Now  this  fact  could  mean 
only  one  of  two  things — either  the  children  of 
Manhattan  were  all  herded  together  within  these 
restricted  areas,  as  Plato  would  have  herded  them 
in  his  Republic  for  purposes  of  state  training,  or 
else  it  is  only  the  children  who  live  in  certain  selec- 
ted localities  who  ever  find  their  way  into  the 
Juvenile  Court. 

It  is  obvious  that  this  latter  explanation  is  the 
only  one  that  fits  the  facts  of  our  municipal  life. 
But  this  explanation  itself  raises  the  further 
interesting  inquiry  as  to  why  the  children  in  cer- 
tain restricted  areas  of  the  city  should  be  so  bad, 
and  the  children  in  all  the  rest  of  the  community 
should  be  so  good?  Within  a  few  months  an 
answer  has  been  given  to  this  question  which  has 
explained  the  whole  problem  of  the  peculiar  dis- 
tribution of  juvenile  delinquency  in  a  great  city 
like  New  York.  In  the  latter  part  of  19 10,  the 
New  York  City  Commission  on  Congestion  of 
Popiilation,  desiring  to  discover  if  there  was  any 
connection  between  crime  upon  the  one  hand  and 
crowded  living  conditions  upon  the  other,  ad- 
dressed a  communication  to  Mr.  Ernest  K. 
Coulter,  the  Clerk  of  the  Children's  Court  in  Man- 
hattan and  a  recognised  authority  upon  the  subject 


148  Function  of  the  Church 

of  juvenile  delinquency,  inquiring  as  to  the  reason 
why  twelve  thousand  boys  and  girls  are  arraigned 
every  year  before  the  bar  of  this  Court  for  more 
or  less  serious  offences.  Mr.  Coulter's  reply  was 
interesting.  He  said  nothing  whatsoever  as  to 
the  depravity  of  unspoiled  and  untrained  human 
nature.  He  made  no  reference  to  the  fact  that 
boys  will  be  boys — and  presumably,  girls  will  be 
girls!  He  laid  little  or  no  stress  upon  the  foolish- 
ness or  ignorance  or  cruelty  or  indifference  of 
parents,  or  the  failure  of  the  churches  and  schools 
to  provide  adequate  moral  training.  One  expla- 
nation of  juvenile  delinquency  alone  seemed  to 
hold  his  attention.  The  fundamental  reason,  he 
said,  why  all  these  thousands  of  boys  and  girls 
come  into  our  Children's  Court  every  year  to  be 
tried  for  crime  is  that  they  live  in  tenements! 
"Congestion  is  responsible  for  a  vast  number  of 
cases  that  come  into  the  Children's  Courts  of  New 
York  City ;  environment  counts  nine-tenths  in  the 
whole  proposition  of  juvenile  delinquency."  In- 
stantly, when  this  statement  was  made  public, 
the  story  of  the  map  and  the  pins  became  intelli- 
gible. The  boys  in  one  part  of  the  city  are  much 
like  the  boys  in  every  other  part  of  the  city — and 
the  parents  also  living  in  the  various  sections  of 
the  community  are  of  much  the  same  clay  as  well. 
In  great  areas  of  the  city,  the  children  have  fairly 
decent  homes,  go  to  good  schools,  play  in  open 
playgrounds — in  a  word,  are  under  environmental 
conditions    which    are    not    wholly    bad.     And 


Social  Question  in  Religion       149 

although  these  children  are  impulsive  and  curious 
and  lawless  like  all  children,  and  are  being  reared 
under  conditions  which,  compared  with  what  might 
be  and  ought  to  be,  are  anything  but  ideal,  yet 
few  there  are  who  ever  find  their  way  into  the  paths 
of  sin  and  crime.  If  any  evidence  is  needed  of  the 
basic  goodness  of  human  nature,  study  these  child- 
ren of  New  York,  living  under  conditions  which, 
at  the  very  best  are  artificial,  repressive,  and  not 
seldom  demoralising,  and  see  how  few  of  them 
really  go  astray!  Here  upon  the  other  hand, 
however,  are  great  myriads  of  children  living  in  cer- 
tain other  portions  of  the  city,  where  the  environ- 
ing conditions  are  as  bad  as  human  ignorance, 
indifference,  and  greed  can  make  them.  These 
children,  if  we  may  believe  Mr.  Coulter,  are  the 
same  kind  of  children  as  these  others  of  which  we 
have  been  speaking.  They  are  swayed  by  the 
same  impulses,  driven  by  the  same  passions,  moved 
by  the  same  sentiments  of  generosity  and  com- 
radeship. And  yet  thousands  of  them  go  astray 
every  year!  And  who  can  wonder  that  they  do? 
Is  not  the  wonder  that  any  of  these  innocents 
are  ever  preserved  from  moral  ruin?  Born  into 
crowded  homes  which  give  no  access  to  fresh  air 
and  sunlight,  and  which  are  filled  with  dirt,  disease, 
and  decay  of  every  kind,  and  hence  pale  and  sickly 
from  the  very  first  hour  of  birth — denied  clean 
and  nourishing  and  adequate  food,  and  hence 
weak,  underfed,  and  anaemic — neglected  and  per- 
haps abused  by  parents  who  are  worn    out  by 


150  Function  of  the  Church 

exhausting  and  ill-paid  toil — playing  in  dark  tene- 
ment-halls or  dirty  gutters,  and  never  in  green 
pastiues  or  by  still  waters — put  to  work  in  sweat- 
shop or  factory  or  store  when  freedom  and  delight 
should  be  the  heritage  of  every  child — living  in 
small  rooms  crowded  with  boarders  as  well  as  with 
members  of  the  family,  where  all  personal  privacy 
and  separation  of  the  sexes  are  impossible,  and 
hence  early  acquainted  with  facts  which  should 
be  unknown  to  the  mind  of  any  boy  or  girl — over- 
whelmed, in  short,  by  all  the  conditions  which 
grinding  poverty  in  a  great  city  makes  inevitable 
to-day — living,  to  sum  up  the  whole  horror  of  the 
thing,  in  East  Side  tenements ! — what  wonder  that 
the  children  teeming  in  these  hideous  portions  of 
the  city  find  their  way  to  the  Juvenile  Court  at  the 
rate  of  a  thousand  a  month!  The  fact  of  the 
matter  is,  the  problem  of  juvenile  delinquency  is 
scarcely  a  matter  of  the  individual  child  at  all. 
"Boys  as  such  are  never  bad,"  says  Mr.  John 
Quincy  Adams,  Jr.,  of  the  Parental  Republic  in 
California.  "I  have  learned,"  he  continues,  "that 
the  boys  who  are  called  bad  are  simply  the  victims 
of  circumstance  and  environment."  ^  The  problem 
is  nine-tenths  a  matter  of  social  conditions — of 
homes,  of  streets,  of  playgrounds,  of  child  labour, 

'Article  in  "The  Survey,"  July,  191 1.     See  also  James  Whit- 
comb  Riley's  familiar  stanza: 

"  I  believe  all  children  's  good, 
If  they  're  only  understood — 
Even  bad  ones,  'pears  to  me, 
'S  jes'  as  good  as  they  can  be." 


Social  Question  in  Religion       151 

of  working  mothers,  of  wages,  of  congestion,  of 
rents,  of  systems  of  taxation,  of  corrupt  politics, 
of  industrial  servitude,  of  poverty.  Between  the 
Children's  Court  and  certain  portions  of  the 
city  there  is  "No  Thoroughfare,"  for  the  reason 
that  the  problem  of  social  conditions,  as  we  know 
it  to-day,  does  not  intrude  at  all.  But  between 
this  same  Court  and  certain  other  portions  of  the 
city,  the  highway  is  broad  and  smooth,  and  many 
are  the  little  feet  that  travel  thereon,  for  the  reason 
that  the  problem  of  social  conditions  constitutes 
the  whole  of  life.  I  look  at  my  own  boy  sometimes, 
as  he  plays  in  my  home  or  lies  at  night  asleep  upon 
his  bed,  and  I  know  that  the  chances  are  over- 
whelmingly in  favour  of  his  never  being  arraigned 
in  the  Juvenile  Court.  Not  that  the  boy  is  different 
from  any  other  curious  and  impulsive  youngster,  but 
because  a  case  of  juvenile  delinquency  in  my  neigh- 
bourhood is  almost  unheard  of.  And  then  I  think 
of  my  brother  in  the  slums,  who  looks  at  his  boy  as 
he  plays  in  the  gutter  or  tosses  feverishly  upon  the 
floor  of  a  tenement-room  which  has  neither  light  nor 
air ; — and  I  know  the  constant  fear  in  his  heart  lest 
the  lad  should  some  day  go  astray,  as  hundreds 
have  already  gone  upon  that  accursed  street.  And 
then  I  think  of  how  certain  it  is  that,  if  the  boys 
were  exchanged,  their  moral  destinies  would  be  re- 
versed !  What  wonder  that  the  pins  upon  the  map 
were  bunched !  "  Sin  is  misery,"  says  Prof.  Patten, 
"Misery  is  poverty;  the  antidote  of  poverty  is 
income,"     And   the  Juvenile  Court  records  are 


152  Function  of  the  Church 

the  exhibit  which  prove  this  article  of  indictment ! 
(3)  Prostitution 

Most  impressive  of  all,  however,  because  most 
pathetic  and  degrading  of  all  moral  offences,  is  the 
fact  of  prostitution.  Here,  as  in  nearly  every  other 
realm  of  htiman  experience,  the  explanation  in  the 
past  has  been  one  purely  individualistic.  The 
prostitute  is  a  "bad  woman" — a  creature  totally 
depraved — a  moral  leper — and  therefore  of  course 
an  outcast !  She  leads  the  hideous  life  of  physical 
and  moral  self-abasement  because  she  is  vicious — 
and  one  need  not  look  therefore  beyond  the  con- 
fines of  her  own  soul  to  uncover  the  cause  of  her 
sin.  Now  and  again,  to  be  sure,  there  has  arisen 
a  voice  in  lonely  protest  against  this  outlawTy  of 
the  "fallen  woman."  A  prophet  of  moral  vision, 
like  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  an  historian  of  philosophical 
insight,  like  Mr.  Lecky,  have  shown  us  at  the  very 
least  that  there  is  something  more  involved  in  the 
problem  than  the  individuality  of  the  prostitute 
herself.  But  from  the  most  ancient  days  to  the 
present  time,  there  has  been  little  change  in  the 
attitude  of  humanity  toward  this  RvdvH  phenome- 
non of  social  life ;  and  the  prostitute  has  wandered 
in  all  ages  and  in  all  coimtries,  as  the  most  lonely 
and  wretched  of  mortals. 

Within  our  own  time,  however,  there  seems  to 
have  come  a  new  understanding  of  the  "fallen 
woman,"  and  a  new  sympathy  for  her  condition. 
With  the  new  conception  of  the  individual  as  social, 


Social  Question  in  Religion       153 

and  the  resulting  fixing  of  the  attention  of  men 
upon  the  "background"  as  well  as  the  foreground 
of  life — that  is  to  say,  upon  society  as  well  as  upon 
the  individual — there  has  come  to  be  the  feeling 
that,  with  prostitution  as  with  every  other  ill  of 
body  and  of  soul,  there  is  a  social  or  economic 
explanation  which  goes  far  deeper  than  the  custom- 
ary explanation  of  individual  depravity,  which 
has  little  to  hallow  or  sustain  it,  after  all,  but 
tradition.  Our  age,  at  any  rate,  is  remarkable  for 
nothing  that  is  more  striking  than  the  deliberate 
reopening  of  the  whole  question  of  prostitution, 
and  the  ever-growing  tendency  to  throw  the 
responsibility  for  the  situation  back  from  the  indi- 
vidual woman  who  has  fallen,  to  the  social  organ- 
ism of  which  she  is  "a  component  and  essential 
part."  This  of  course  is  only  what  is  being  done,  as 
we  have  seen,  in  every  field  of  human  experience 
to-day,  and  is  thus  only  one  more  expression  of 
the  great  social  tendency  of  the  hour;  but  it  is 
extraordinary  nevertheless  as  the  farthest  appli- 
cation of  this  new  social  interpretation  of  life. 
If  the  theory  holds  here  it  will  certainly  hold 
anywhere. 

Evidences  of  the  new  social  interpretation  of 
this  problem  of  prostitution  are  abundant.  Thus 
Miss  Lavinia  Dock,  in  her  remarkable  study  of 
venereal  diseases  in  her  recent  book  entitled 
"Hygiene  and  Morality,"  declares  that  the  breed- 
ing place  of  these  hideous  diseases  is  to  be  found 
in  prostitution,  and  the  prostitution  she  directly 


154  Function  of  the  Church 

attributes  to  the  economic  conditions  of  modem 
life.  She  flatly  denies  that  the  average  prostitute 
is  bad,  and  in  the  business  because  she  likes  it; 
and  she  seems  to  have  adequate  reason  for  her 
belief.  Thus  she  reminds  us  that,  at  the  great 
Brussels  Conference  for  the  Prophylaxis  of  Syphilis 
and  the  Venereal  Diseases  in  1899,  the  statement 
was  made  again  and  again  that  "the  number  of 
chronic  or  persevering  prostitutes,  if  separated 
from  the  others,  would  be  astonishingly  small." 
She  quotes  U.  S.  District  Attorney  Sims,  of 
Chicago,  who  made  the  famous  investigation  of 
the  white  slave  traffic  in  his  city,  as  saying  that 
"about  four-fifths  of  all  prostitutes  are  im will- 
ingly such."  The  fact  is,  she  says,  the  vast  ma- 
jority of  prostitutes  are  not  "true  prostitutes" 
at  all, 

but  unwilling  victims  of  a  stupid  social  order — sacri- 
fices— human  loss  and  waste  due  to  pure  mismanage- 
ment. The  underlying  reason  for  their  lapse  is 
poverty  or  the  unequal  struggle  against  want.  All 
medical  and  social  experts  who  have  studied  this 
problem  agree  that  prostitution  is  a  disease  of 
poverty.  Testimony  upon  this  point  is  so  abundant 
that  it  is  not  necessary  to  prove  the  point  here,  but 
it  may  be  recalled  that  the  favourite  ground  for  the 
argimients  of  those  who  uphold  prostitution  and 
licensed  vice  is  the  dictum  that  "  there  must  always  be 
prostitution  because  there  must  always  be  poverty." 

Another  interesting  piece  of  evidence  upon  this 


Social  Question  in  Religion       155 

point  comes  from  Prof.  Edwin  R.  A.  Seligman,  of 
Columbia  University,  one  of  the  most  learned, 
brilliant,  and  trusted  students  of  social  conditions 
in  America  to-day.  In  an  address  before  the  New 
York  Society  for  Sanitary  and  Moral  Prophylaxis, 
reported  in  full  in  the  Society's  Quarterly,  "Social 
Diseases,"  for  January,  191 1,  Dr.  Seligman  dis- 
cussed the  whole  problem  of  prostitution.  His 
"conclusion  of  the  whole  matter"  is  impressive. 
"The  problem  now-a-days,"  he  says,  "is  primarily 
a  social  and  economic  one.  It  is  the  problem 
not  of  the  moral  pervert  but  of  the  woman  who 
has  not  enough  to  live  on  and  who,  therefore, 
takes  to  the  practice  as  a  means  of  livelihood." 
Again,  let  me  refer  for  testimony  upon  this 
point,  to  the  recent  epoch-making  report  of  the 
Chicago  Vice  Commission,  which  has  made  so 
profoimd  an  impression  not  only  upon  Chicago  but 
also  upon  the  country  at  large.  It  is  doubtful  if 
a  more  careful  and  searching  investigation  of  the 
social  evil  has  ever  been  made  anywhere  than  by 
the  members  of  this  Commission.  Composed  of 
thirty  leading  citizens,  representative  of  the  occu- 
pations, nationalities,  and  religious  interests  of  the 
city,  including  four  lawyers,  the  chief  justice  of  the 
Municipal  Court,  the  judge  of  the  Juvenile  Court, 
the  U.  S.  District  Attorney,  four  physicians, — all 
specialists, — four  business  men,  five  university 
professors,  seven  clergymen,  and  numerous  social 
workers — backed  by  an  appropriation  from  the 
city  of  $10,000 — at  work  upon  the  problem  without 


156  Function  of  the  Church 

interruption  for  over  a  year — this  Commission 
presented  a  report  which  is  ruthless  in  its  presenta- 
tion of  facts,  and  overwhelmingly  convincing  in 
its  interpretation  of  these  facts  and  in  its  recom- 
mendations for  action.  Seeking  to  explain  the 
origin  of  prostitution,  and  discover  the  reasons 
why  thousands  of  women  enter  and  continue  upon 
its  practice,  these  investigators  found  themselves 
in  the  vast  majority  of  cases  led  straight  back  from 
the  individual  prostitute  to  the  social  conditions 
prevalent  in  the  city.  Says  Prof.  Graham  Taylor, 
analysing  the  Report  of  the  Commission  in  the 
"Survey"  for  May  6,  191 1: 

The  sources  whence  these  2420  women  and  girls 
under  review  were  drawn  into  vice  included  bad  or 
uncongenial  homes;  low  wages,  insufficient  either  to 
proper  maintenance  or  to  relieve  the  monotony  of 
constant  toil ;  the  pursuit  of  pleasure  and  the  want  of 
provision  for  recreation;  procuring,  through  many 
agencies;  involuntary  entrance  upon  or  continuance 
in  "white  slavery";  sub-normality,  rendering  the 
victim  susceptible  to  temptation  or  to  exploitation; 
lack  of  education  in  sex  physiology  and  hygiene. 

Of  course  the  individual  factor  in  the  case  is 
never  wholly  eliminated  here,  as  it  is  nowhere 
else.  But  while  the  mentally  sub-normal  or 
physically  abnormal  individual  was  occasionally 
encountered,  and  some  girls  explained  their  plight 
on  the  ground  that  they  were  "born  bad,"  were 
"naturally  bad,"  or  were  "always  immoral,"  the 


Social  Question  in  Religion       i57 

vast  majority  "were  victims  of  conditions  and 
circumstances  for  which  they  were  less  responsible 
than  their  families,  their  employers,  or  the  com- 
munity." "In  a  large  proportion  of  cases,"  says 
Prof.  Taylor,  "home  conditions  contributed  to, 
if  they  did  not  cause,  the  downfall  of  daughters 
or  wives.  These  conditions  were  sometimes  of 
course  the  result  of  individual  ignorance,  brutality, 
or  bestiality,  but  more  often  were  the  result  cf 
general  poverty  and  wretchedness." 

Economic  conditions  [continues  Prof.  Taylor],  both 
on  account  of  low  wages  and  demoralising  influences 
of  employment,  stand  next  as  the  most  fruitful  source 
of  vice.  ...  In  a  group  of  twenty-five,  the  average 
wage  before  entering  the  life  was  five  dollars  a  week. 
...  In  other  groups,  averaging  forty-five  in  num- 
ber, the  wages  ran  from  four  dollars  and  eighty  cents 
to  six  dollars  a  week,  and  for  younger  girls  down  to 
two  dollars  and  a  half.  ...  On  an  average  the  wage- 
earning  capacity  of  these  girls  rose  to  twenty-five 
dollars  a  week  after  they  abandoned  themselves  to  a 
vicious  life. 

And  so  Prof.  Taylor  goes  on,  paragraph  after 
paragraph,  in  his  analysis  of  the  social  causes  of 
prostitution,  as  revealed  by  the  thousands  of  in- 
dividual cases  studied  by  the  Chicago  Vice  Com- 
mission, including  the  significant  statement,  which 
seems  always  to  appear  in  all  discussions  of  this 
subject — "Poverty,  leading  to  overcrowding  in  the 
houses  and  to  work  under  too  high  pressure  and  too 


158  Function  of  the  Church 

long  hours,  also  contributed  its  full  quota." ^  One 
is  inevitably  reminded,  by  the  conclusions  of  this 
Report,  of  the  haunting  statement  contained  in  the 
Report  of  the  Working  Women's  Society  some  years 
ago,  "  Woman's  wages  have  no  limit,  since  the  path 
of  shame  is  always  open  to  her." 

The  most  impressive  testimony  which  I  have 
yet  discovered,  however,  as  to  the  essentially  social 
or  economic  nature  of  prostitution,  is  that  of  Miss 
Maud  E.  Miner,  who  is  perhaps  the  leading  expert 
upon  this  subject  in  New  York  to-day  as  a  result 

'  "  The  girl  who  has  no  home  soon  learns  of  '  city  poverty,' 
all  the  more  cruel  to  her  because  of  the  artificial  contrasts.  She 
quickly  learns  of  the  possibilities  about  her,  of  the  joys  of 
comfort,  good  food,  entertainment,  attractive  clothes.  Poverty 
becomes  a  menace  and  a  snare.  One  who  has  not  beheld  the 
struggle  or  come  in  personal  contact  with  the  tempted  soul  of 
the  underpaid  girl  can  never  realize  what  the  poverty  of  the 
city  means  to  her.  One  who  has  never  seen  her  bravely  fight- 
ing against  such  fearful  odds  will  never  understand.  A  day's 
sickness  or  a  week  out  of  work  are  tragedies  in  her  life.  They 
mean  trips  to  the  pawnbrokers,  meagre  dinners,  a  weakened 
will,  often  a  plunge  into  the  abyss  from  which  she  so  often 
never  escapes.  Hundreds,  if  not  thousands,  of  girls  from 
country  towns,  and  those  born  in  the  city  but  who  have  been 
thrown  on  their  own  resources,  are  compelled  to  live  in  cheap 
boarding  or  rooming  houses  on  the  average  wage  of  six  dollars. 
How  do  they  exist  on  this  sum  ?  It  is  impossible  to  figure  it 
out  on  a  mathematical  basis.  If  the  wage  were  eight  dollars 
per  week,  and  the  girl  paid  two  and  a  half  dollars  for  her  room, 
one  dollar  for  laundry,  and  sixty  cents  for  carfare,  she  would 
have  less  than  fifty  cents  left  at  the  end  of  the  week.  That  is, 
provided  she  ate  ten  cent  breakfasts,  fifteen  cent  luncheons  and 
twenty-five  cent  dinners.  Is  it  any  wonder  that  a  tempted 
girl  who  receives  only  six  dollars  per  week  working  with  her 
hands  sells  her  body  for  twenty-five  dollars  per  week  when  she 


Social  Question  in  Religion       159 

of  her  years  of  personal  experience,  first  as  proba- 
tion officer  in  the  Night  Court  for  Women,  and 
second  as  founder  and  secretary  of  the  New  York 
Probation  Association,  which  maintains  the 
famous  Waverly  House  as  "a  home  for  women 
released  from  the  courts  on  probation."  Miss 
Miner,  from  intimate  association  with  hundreds  of 
the  women  of  the  streets,  knows  the  inside  of  the 
problem,  from  the  women's  standpoint  at  least, 
as  does  nobody  else;  and  what  does  she  have  to 
say  as  to  the  causes  of  prostitution  or  the  reasons 

learns  there  is  a  demand  for  it  and  men  are  willing  to  pay  the 
price?  On  the  one  hand,  her  employer  demands  honesty,  faith- 
fulness and  a  'clean  and  neat  appearance,'  and  for  all  this  he 
contributes  from  his  profits  an  average  of  six  dollars  for  every 
week.  In  the  sad  life  of  prostitution,  on  the  other  hand,  we  find 
here  the  employer,  demanding  the  surrender  of  her  virtue,  pays 
her  an  average  of  twenty-five  dollars  per  week.  Which  em- 
ployer wins  the  half-starved  child  to  his  side  in  this  unequal 
battle? — What  show  has  she  in  the  competitive  system  that  exists 
to-day? — Are  flesh  and  blood  so  cheap,  mental  qualifications  so 
common,  and  honesty  of  so  little  value,  that  the  manager  of  one 
of  our  big  department  stores  feels  justified  in  paying  a  high- 
school  girl  who  has  served  nearly  one  year  as  an  inspector  of 
sales,  the  beggarly  wage  of  $4.00  per  week?  What  is  the  natural 
result  of  such  an  industrial  condition?  Dishonesty  and  immoral- 
ity, not  from  choice,  but  necessity— in  order  to  live."—"  Report 
of  Chicago  Vice  Commission,  '  Introduction  and  Summary.'  " 

The  conclusion  of  the  Report  of  the  Minneapolis  Vice  Com- 
mission is  equally  emphatic.  It  recognizes  that  "one  does  not  need 
to  go  far  along  this  line  of  research  to  reach  the  conviction 
that  one  of  the  first  factors  in  tracing  the  sources  of  supply,  is 
the  increasingly  large  influx  of  young  girls  into  industry,"  and, 
after  a  summary  of  what  this  means,  states,  "  The  fault  (in 
such  cases)  is  not  so  much  in  the  individual — it  is  rather  the 
result  of  the  industrial  system." 


i6o  Function  of  the  Church 

why  women  practise  this  mode  of  earning  a  liveli- 
hood ?     In  her  first  annual  report,  Miss  Miner  says : 

Why  have  girls  entered  upon  a  life  of  immorality 
or  prostitution?  ...  Of  the  208  girls  who  answered 
this  question,  45%  claimed  it  was  the  influence  of 
procurers,  men  who  live  on  the  proceeds  of  prostitu- 
tion, and  of  older  prostitutes;  18%  said  that  they  had 
been  deserted  by  men  whom  they  loved  or  who  had 
promised  to  marry  them,  and  left  home  when  they 
found  that  they  were  pregnant ;  16%,  that  it  was  the  re- 
sult of  work  conditions,  or  the  lack  of  money  to  pay  for 
food  and  lodging;  8%  claimed  to  have  been  drugged  or 
forcibly  assaulted;  and  5%  had  entered  upon  an 
immoral  life  because  of  drink.  Others  attributed 
it  to  imhappiness  and  cruelty  at  home,  fear  of  going 
home  after  staying  out  late  at  night,  desire  for  good 
clothes  and  love  of  amusement,  while  with  three  at 
least  it  was  natural  inclination 

In  this  analysis  strictly  economic  conditions  seem 
to  play  a  surprisingly  subordinate  part.  Discus- 
sing this  fact,  Miss  Miner  states  that  economic 
conditions  are  more  vital  than  they  would  seem 
upon  the  face  of  these  percentages.  "The  lack  of 
work,"  she  says,  "irregularity  of  work,  character 
of  work,  and  low  wages,  are  oftentimes  responsible. 
Though  these  were  given  as  a  first  reason  by  only 
16%  of  the  group  questioned,  they  have  been  the 
real  reason  for  many  (others)  who  had  taken  the 
first  misstep,  yielding  to  the  offers  of  prostitutes 
and  men  who  trafficked  in  vice." 


Social  Question  in  Religion       i6i 

In  her  second  annual  report,  Miss  Miner  is 
much  more  definite  upon  this  point,  and  draws 
sharp  distinction  between  the  individual  and  the 
social  causes  of  the  ill.  "The  larger  number  of 
these  girls,"  she  says,  discussing  the  women  whom 
she  meets  night  after  night  in  the  Night  Court, 
"are  not  guilty  of  moral  obliquity  because  they 
are  naturally  bad,  vicious,  or  depraved.  In  my 
work  with  girls  in  and  out  of  prisons  during  the 
last  five  years,  I  can  truthfully  say  that  I  have 
seen  very  few  girls  who  could  be  so  classed.  In 
comparison  with  the  total  number,  few  have  chosen 
the  life  deliberately."  Miss  Miner  recognises 
perfectly  that  many  have  "drifted  into  a  life  of 
vice  through  weakness  of  will  or  through  domina- 
tion by  a  stronger  will."  But  she  rightly  points 
out  that  this  personal  weakness  would  never  have 
been  fatal  had  not  the  influence  of  society  been  all 
down  instead  of  up.  "With  the  larger  number  of 
girls  there  seems  little  room  for  reasonable  doubt 
that  their  wrong-doing  has  been  due  to  environ- 
mental causes — the  conditions  under  which  they 
live  and  work  and  play;  and  to  the  presence  in 
society  of  the  wretched  men  who  exploit  them  for 
gain  and  who  profit  from  prostitution."  It  is 
difficult  enough,  as  Miss  Miner  constantly  empha- 
sises, to  isolate  the  immediate  social  causes  and 
determine  the  exact  degree  of  their  several  influ- 
ences. But  one  fact  looms  up  with  tremendous 
significance — that  "nearly  all  the  girls"  who  go 
wrong  and  find  their  way  into  the  courts  and 


i62  Function  of  the  Church 

prisons  as  prostitutes  "have  at  some  time  been 
employed,  and  that  many  of  them  have  been 
working  under  conditions  which  were  not 
favourable." 

Here  now  do  we  have  overwhelmingly  convin- 
cing evidence  that  the  fundamental  cause  of  this 
dreadful  scourge  of  prostitution  is  located  not  in 
the  soul  of  the  individual  but  in  the  organisation 
of  society.  It  is  at  bottom,  like  all  the  other  ills 
which  we  have  been  studying,  a  social  and  not  an 
individual  problem.  And  it  is  this  fact  which 
is  determining  all  the  steps  which  are  being 
taken  in  this  day  and  generation  for  its  repres- 
sion and  ultimate  annihilation.  There  are  still 
those  who  hold  with  Dr.  Richard  C.  Cabot — who 
strangely  enough  believes  that  the  individual 
and  not  the  social  factor  is  the  thing  of  supreme 
importance  here — that  "prostitution  can  be 
attacked  only  in  the  individual  soul  and  by  the 
individual  soul  overmastered  by  God";  but  the 
great  majority  of  social  workers,  in  accordance 
with  the  social  diagnosis,  are  seeking  social  reme- 
dies. Thus,  Miss  Lavinia  Dock,  while  laying  due 
stress  upon  the  training  of  the  will  and  the  educa- 
ting of  the  young  in  matters  of  sex  hygiene,  sees 
hope  of  ultimate  prevention  only  in  radical  social 
changes.  "Child  labour,"  she  says,  "must  be 
abolished";  girls  must  be  protected  not  only  by 
"legislation,  but  by  vigilant  administration  and 
unswerving  enforcement  of  law " ;  .  .  .  "widowed 
mothers  must  not  be  compelled  to  act  as  fathers 


Social  Question  in  Religion       163 

and  mothers  both,  by  being  driven  to  earn  their 
children's  bread  outside  the  home.  .  .  .  The 
fundamental  and  crying  need  in  the  protection  of 
older  girls  is  a  living-wage  .  .  .  and  hours  of  work 
need  to  be  shortened  for  all  workers." 

Prof.  Seligman,  in  the  address  above  referred  to, 
defining  the  problem  "as  primarily  a  social  and 
economic  one,"  immediately  follows  up  this  state- 
ment with  the  declaration  that  we  can  "affect  the 
supply  of  women"  for  this  business  primarily  by 
securing  "the  introduction  of  general  economic 
and  social  measures  which  tend  to  raise  the  whole 
plane  of  the  standard  of  life." 

The  recommendations  of  the  Chicago  Vice  Com- 
mission for  the  immediate  repression  and  ultimate 
annihilation  of  this  whole  wretched  business  are 
along  these  same  lines.  It  urges  upon  parents  and 
teachers  the  importance  of  the  physical,  mental, 
and  moral  training  of  the  individual;  but  it 
lays  its  chief  stress  upon  the  agencies  of  social 
change. 

Social  and  philanthropic  agencies  are  recom- 
mended to  make  intensive  studies  of  the  working 
conditions  and  wages  of  girls  and  women  in  order  to 
ascertain  the  living  wage  and  standard  of  living 
requisite  for  a  decent  life;  to  give  publicity  to  the 
moral  dangers  surrounding  recreation,  while  working 
to  eliminate  them;  to  safeguard  immigrant  girls  and 
working  women  by  providing  safe  homes  for  their 
abode  and  keeping  them  out  of  the  reach  of  procurers 
while  seeking  work. 


1 64  Function  of  the  Church 

Definite  recommendations  are  made  also  to 
the  Board  of  Health,  the  Park  Commissioners, 
the  police  department,  and  other  branches 
of  the  municipal  government  of  Chicago,  to  the 
state  government  and  even  to  the  federal 
government — all  pointing  to  the  inevitably  social 
character  of  the  problem,  which  thus  demands 
the  action  of  social  forces  for  its  proper  treat- 
ment. 

Most  significant  also  is  the  work  of  Miss  Miner 
with  her  girls  at  Waverly  House.  So  far  as  can 
be  judged  by  the  activities  of  this  institution,  two 
methods  are  alone  employed  in  the  work  of  indi- 
vidual rehabilitation.  "The  first  thing  in  this 
work,"  says  Miss  Miner,"  is  to  place  the  girl  in 
the  right  surroundings,"  In  other  words,  she  is 
given  the  influence  of  a  good  home,  which  she  has 
perhaps  never  known  before.  Then,  in  the  second 
place,  the  girl  is  given  an  economic  chance.  "In 
the  effort  at  rehabilitation,"  says  Miss  Miner, 
"employment  is  one  of  the  most  important  fact- 
ors." Not  any  kind  of  employment  of  course! 
But  employment  under  decent  sanitary  and 
moral  conditions,  with  short  hours,  and  with 
an  adequate  wage.  These  two  things — a  home 
and  an  economic  opportunity — Miss  Miner  guar- 
antees to  every  fallen  woman  entering  her  in- 
stitution. And  what  wonder  is  it  that  she  is 
accomplishing  results  in  terms  of  personal  char- 
acter which  would  have  been  unbelievable  a  few 
years  ago! 


Social  Question  in  Religion        165 

Prostitution,  therefore,  like  all  other  kinds  of 
crime  and  sin,  is  primarily  a  consequence  not  of 
individual  depravity  but  of  social  maladjustment. 
The  individual  is  naturally  good  and  true  and  pure 
— weak-willed  perhaps,  pleasure-loving,  and  care- 
less— but  sound  nevertheless ! — and  her  fall  is  thus 
to  be  attributed  to  the  cruelty  of  a  society  which 
hinders  and  does  not  help,  casts  down  instead  of 
raising  up.  This  is  a  painful,  but  at  the  same  time 
it  is  a  joyful,  message.  For  the  interpretation  of 
this  ill  in  terms  of  social  instead  of  individual  re- 
sponsibility means  that  prostitution,  like  every 
other  ill,  can  be  abolished.  So  long  as  it  was  be- 
lieved that  this  sin  was  rooted  in  a  human  nature 
essentially  depraved,  the  situation  seemed  hope- 
less. But  now  that  it  is  seen  to  be  rooted  in  the 
conditions  of  organised  society,  it  is  at  once  seen 
to  be,  like  tuberculosis  and  poverty,  "preventable 
and  curable."  It  is  not  surprising  to  find  Miss 
Dock  saying  of  prostitution,  exactly  what  Miss 
Brandt  has  said  of  poverty,  that  it  is  "capable  of 
being  reduced  to  an  easily  controllable  minimum." 
And  it  seems  perfectly  natural  to  find  a  physician 
like  Dr.  William  J.  Robinson,  dreaming  of  a  Utopia 
where,  through  the  proper  regulation  of  social 
conditions,  prostitution  with  all  its  hideous  train 
of  diseases  is  utterly  unknown,  exactly  as  social 
workers  on  every  hand  are  dreaming  of  similar 
Utopias  where  poverty  is  forgotten.  Given  a 
divinely-endowed  and  a  divinely-empowered 
soul  within,  and  an   easily   transformable   social 


i66  Function  of  the  Church 

organisation  without,  and  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven  becomes  something  more  than  an  idle 
dream!  ^ 

'  I  have  used,  in  this  discussion  of  prostitution  as  literally  a 
social  evil,  only  facts,  figures,  and  expert  opinions.  We  must  often 
turn  to  fiction,  however,  for  the  most  convincing  presentation  of 
the  truth  of  a  political  or  economic  proposition,  as  for  example  the 
depiction  of  slavery  in  "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin."  Thus  do  I  venture 
to  refer  in  this  connection  to  two  wonderfully  vivid  and  impres- 
sive pictures  of  prostitution  as  the  consequence  of  social  malad- 
justment in  recent  fiction — first,  O.  Henry's  short  story  entitled 
"An  Unfinished  Story";  and  secondly,  Reginald  Wright  Kauflf- 
man's  "The  House  of  Bondage." 


CHAPTER  VI 
THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  SOCIAL  QUESTION. 

HERE,  in  such  examples  as  these  of  crime, 
juvenile  delinquency,  and  prostitution,  do  we 
find,  to  my  mind,  a  complete  demonstration  of  the 
thesis  that  sin,  like  physical  disease  and  material 
poverty,  is  social  in  its  origin  and  is  to  be  cured 
through  social  changes.  Here  is  the  proof  of  Prof. 
Patten's  remarkable  assertion  that  "sin,  misery, 
and  poverty  become  one  problem,  and  their  anti- 
dote is  income.  All  three  can  be  wiped  out  by 
changes  in  industrial  conditions."  The  individual 
who  is  immoral,  in  other  words,  like  the  individual 
who  is  sick  or  the  individual  who  is  poor,  presents 
a  phenomenon  not  of  psychology  but  of  sociology ; 
and  his  cure  is  to  be  found  not  in  the  transforma- 
tion of  the  soul  but  in  the  reconstruction  of  society. 
The  normal  man  is  the  good  man,  just  as  the 
normal  man  is  also  the  well  man ;  and  there  is  no 
explanation  of  his  condition  of  depravity  save  that 
to  be  found  in  the  conditions  of  his  environment. 

(a)      THEODORE   PARKER 

And  what  does  this  extraordinary  interpretation 
of  the  individual  in  terms  of  the  social  organism 

167 


1 68  Function  of  the  Church 

not  mean  to  the  church !  Can  there  be  any  question 
that  it  means  as  great  a  revolution  in  the  methods 
and  aims  of  reHgion  as  in  the  methods  and  aims  of 
medicine  and  organised  charity?  Theodore  Par- 
ker, the  great  American  preacher,  more  than 
fifty  years  ago,  with  his  clear  vision  of  this  coming 
age  of  socialisation,  described  the  change  which 
must  come  over  all  the  functions  of  the  church  in 
words  that  are  still  prophetic  of  a  future  which 
seems  well-nigh  as  remote  as  ever.  Nothing  is  more 
remarkable  than  the  way  in  which  Parker  antici- 
pated nearly  all  of  this  gospel  of  the  social  origin 
of  sin,  which  has  become  so  prominent  in  our  time. 

Will  a  white  lily  [he  said]  grow  in  a  common 
sewer;  can  you  bleach  linen  in  a  tan  pit?  Yes — as 
soon  as  you  can  rear  a  virtuous  population  under 
such  circumstances  (as  these).  Go  to  any  state 
prison  in  the  land,  and  you  shall  find  that  seven- 
eighths  of  the  convicts  came  from  the  perishing  class, 
brought  there  by  crimes  over  which  they  had  no 
control,  crimes  which  would  have  made  you  and  me 
thieves  and  pirates.  The  characters  of  such  men  are 
made  for  them,  far  more  than  by  them.  There  is  no 
more  vice,  perhaps,  born  into  that  class;  they  have 
no  more  "inherited  sin"  than  any  other  class  in  the 
land;  all  the  difference  between  the  morals  and  man- 
ners of  the  rich  and  the  poor  is  the  result  of  education 
and  circumstances. 

All  wrong-doers,  he  says,  may  be  divided  into 
two  classes.    First,  "there  are  the  foes  of  society 


Church  and  Social  Question        169 

— men  who  are  criminals  in  soul,  bom  criminals 
who  have  a  bad  nature."  This  class,  he  points 
out,  is  always  very  small.  Indeed,  in  the  Massa- 
chusetts of  his  day  he  estimated  that  there  were 
probably  not  as  many  as  250  men  "who  by 
nature  are  incapable  of  attaining  the  average 
morality  of  the  race — not  so  many  bom  foes  of 
society  as  are  bom  deaf  and  blind."  In  the  second 
place, — and  this  number  includes  all  wrong-doers 
not  included  in  this  very  small  first  class, — "there 
are  the  victims  of  society" — men  who  go  wrong 
"from  circumstances  which  may  be  ascertained, 
guarded  against,  mitigated,  and  at  last  overcome 
and  removed.  The  causes  of  crime  lie  outside  of 
them  more  than  in  them.  They  are  the  victims 
and  not  the  foes  of  society."  And  then  he  applies 
this  principle  to  the  people  whom  he  addressed 
in  the  great  Boston  Music  Hall  from  Sunday  to 
Sunday. 

Take  away  your  home,  your  property,  your  friends, 
the  respect  of  respectable  men;  take  away  what  you 
have  received  from  education,  intellectual,  moral,  and 
religious;  and  how  much  better  would  the  best  of  you 
be  than  the  men  who  will  to-morrow  be  huddled  off 
to  jail,  for  crimes  committed  in  a  dramshop  to-day? 
The  circumstances  which  have  kept  you  temperate, 
industrious,  respectable,  would  have  made  nine-tenths 
of  the  men  in  jail  as  good  men  as  3^ou  are.  .  .  .  The 
best  among  you  would  have  become  lost  to  virtue  if 
abandoned,  turned  out  in  childhood,  into  the  streets 
to  herd  with  the  wickedest  of  men. 


170  Function  of  the  Church 

Looking  at  the  conditions  in  which  most  people  are 
condemned  to  Hve,  he  cries  out,  with  pardonable 
exaggeration:  "I  wonder  at  the  fewness  of  crimes 
and  not  at  their  multitude;  and  I  must  say  that 
if  goodness  and  piety  did  not  bear  a  greater  pro- 
portion to  the  whole  development  of  the  poor 
than  the  rich,  their  crime  would  be  tenfold." 

Here  surely  is  a  sociology  which  runs  on  all  fours 
with  that  of  Prof.  Patten!  And  the  remedy 
offered  by  Theodore  Parker  is  likewise  similar. 
"All  reform  and  alleviation,"  he  said,  "must 
begin  with  mending  men's  circumstances,  though 
of  course  it  must  not  end  there.  Expect  no 
improvement  in  men  that  are  hungry,  naked,  and 
cold.  What  we  want  is  the  application  of  Christ- 
ianity to  social  life,  nothing  else  will  do  the  work." 

The  church,  therefore,  according  to  Parker,  if  it 
would  do  the  work  which  it  was  appointed  to  do, 
must  grapple  at  first  hand  with  the  conditions 
of  society.  It  has  a  duty  which  it  owes  to  society 
quite  as  much  as  to  the  individual.  It  must  con- 
cern itself  with  politics,  industry,  and  trade — with 
all  the  social  relations  of  our  civilisation.  It  must 
be  "the  means,"  he  said,  in  his  great  sermon  on 
"The  True  Idea  of  a  Christian  Church," 

of  reforming  the  world.  ...  It  should  bring  the 
sentiments,  ideas,  actions  of  the  times  to  be  judged 
by  the  universal  standard — should  measure  the  sins 
of  commerce,  the  sins  of  the  state,  by  the  everlasting 
ideas  on  which  alone  is  based  the  welfare  of  the  world. 


Church  and  Social  Question       171 

The  Christian  Church  should  lead  the  civilisation  of 
the  age.  ...  It  should  lead  the  way  in  all  moral 
enterprises,  in  every  work  aimed  at  the  welfare  of 
men.  ...  Its  sacraments  should  be  great  works  of 
reform,  institutions  for  the  comfort  and  culture  of  men. 
Its  one  end  should  be  the  building  of  a  state  where 
there  is  work  for  every  hand,  bread  for  all  mouths, 
clothing  for  every  back,  culture  for  every  mind,  and 
love  and  faith  in  every  heart. 

There  are  those,  said  Parker, 

who  tell  us  that  the  church  should  say  nothing  and 
do  nothing  (in  the  midst  of  social  wrongs).  If  I 
thought  so,  I  would  never  enter  the  church  but  once 
again,  and  then  to  bow  my  shoulders  to  their  manliest 
work — to  heave  down  its  strong  pillars,  arch  and 
dome  and  roof  and  wall,  steeple  and  tower,  though 
like  Samson  I  buried  myself  under  the  ruins  of  that 
temple  which  profaned  the  worship  of  God  most  high. 
I  would  do  this  in  the  name  of  man;  in  the  name  of 
Christ  I  would  do  it ;  yes,  in  the  dear  and  blessed  name 
of  God. 

(b)    social  reform  as  the  method  of  indi- 
vidual SALVATION 

Here  in  the  light  of  a  social  philosophy  well-nigh 
as  clear  as  that  of  our  ov/n  day,  is  set  forth  the  new 
function  of  the  chiirch.  The  new  religion,  like  the 
new  medicine  and  the  new  charity,  "has  for  its 
subject  not  the  individual  detached  from  the 
world,  but  the  world  itself  in  whose  redemption  the 


172  Function  of  the  Church 

individual  has  his  share" ;  not  the  salvation  of  any 
one  member,  but  the  salvation  of  all  together 
through  the  salvation  of  the  whole  body  of  which 
they  severally  are  parts.  "The  world,"  as  Dean 
Freemantle  put  it  in  the  famous  title  of  his  famous 
book,  "is  the  subject  of  redemption."  The  task 
of  the  church,  in  other  words,  is  no  longer  that  of 
individual  salvation,  but  that  of  social  salvation. 
"The  religion  of  individualism,"  says  Prof.  Pea- 
body,  in  his  "Approach  to  the  Social  Question," 
"is  but  sharing  the  fate  of  the  economics  and  the 
politics  of  individualism."  Precisely  as  a  new 
economics  and  a  new  politics,  a  new  medicine  and 
a  new  philanthropy,  have  issued  from  the  new 
thought  of  the  individual  existing  only  as  a  mem- 
ber of  the  social  whole,  "so  the  circle  of  religious 
experience,"  says  Prof.  Peabody,  "has  widened 
from  the  problem  of  personal  redemption  to  the 
problem  of  a  world  to  be  redeemed;  and  the  indi- 
vidual, instead  of  being  called  to  save  his  soul 
from  a  lost  world,  is  called  to  set  his  soul  to  save 
the  world."  Just  as  the  physician  to-day  finds  the 
task  of  curing  the  individual  invalid  widening  out 
into  the  problem  of  remaking  the  fabric  of  society, 
so  that  it  will  foster  the  health  and  strength  which 
are  normal  to  the  natural  man  and  not  breed  dis- 
ease— just  as  the  charity  worker  discovers  that 
his  task  of  relieving  poverty  expands  into  the 
greater  work  of  preventing  poverty  by  abolishing 
the  injustice  of  our  social  organisation — just  as 
all  modem   thought  and  endeavour  are   carried 


Church  and  Social  Question        173 

straight  back  from  the  individual  to  the  society 
which  has  made  him, — so  also  with  the  church,  in 
its  great  task  of  moral  and  spiritual  salvation! 
Take,  for  example,  the  sins  or  crimes,  which  were 
analysed  above  from  the  standpoint  of  causes  and 
remedies!  How  is  the  church  to  deal  with  the 
young  criminal  who  is  brought  into  the  court  of 
Judge  O' Sullivan,  or  with  one  of  the  twelve 
thousand  delinquents  who  are  arraigned  annually 
before  the  bar  of  the  Juvenile  Court  in  Manhattan? 
Can  it  hope  any  longer  to  accomplish  anything 
by  regarding  these  immoral  individuals  simply  as 
individuals  "detached  from  the  world"?  Can  it 
look  at  them  merely  as  souls  which  are  inherently 
bad,  and  which  must  be  changed  by  some  process 
of  personal  conversion  or  confirmation?  Forget- 
ting all  about  streets  and  slums,  tenement^  and 
saloons,  congestion  of  population,  child  labour, 
low  wages,  poverty,  can  it  expect  to  save  the  souls 
of  these  individuals,  as  the  phrase  is,  by  taking 
them  into  Sunday-school,  or  introducing  them  to 
prayer-meetings,  or  preaching  sermons  to  them, 
or  even  bringing  them  under  the  immediate  influ- 
ence of  strong  and  uplifting  personalties? — Or,  in 
the  same  way,  take  the  problem  of  prostitution! 
Can  the  church  continue  longer  to  regard  these 
unfortunates  merely  as  bad  women,  wholly  unaf- 
fected by  disordered  and  poverty-stricken  homes, 
organised  vice,  and  economic  slavery;  and  expect 
to  save  them  by  methods  of  individual  appeal, 
wholly  divorced  from  all  attempts  to  surround 


174  Function  of  the  Church 

them  with  the  influences  of  a  good  home  and  to 
open  to  them  a  legitimate  economic  opportunity? 
— Is  not  this  suggestion  preposterous  upon  the  face 
of  things?  Is  it  not  evident  that  the  church  must 
go  behind  the  individual  who  is  a  sinner,  just  as 
modern  medicine  goes  behind  the  individual  who 
is  ill  and  modem  charity  behind  the  individual  who 
is  poor,  and  investigate  the  social  background 
which  is  ultimately  responsible  for  the  abnormal 
individual,  and  in  the  change  of  this  background 
achieve  indirectly  but  none  the  less  efficiently  the 
change  of  this  individual?  The  cure  of  the 
soul,  in  other  words,  is  not  different  from  the 
cure  of  the  body;  the  problem  of  spiritual 
poverty  is  the  same  as  the  problem  of  material 
poverty.  The  church's  task  remains  to-day 
what  it  has  always  been — the  salvation  of  the 
individual!  It  is  the  business  of  the  church 
to  make  men  to  be  what  they  ought  to  be  spiritu- 
ally, exactly  as  it  is  the  business  of  the  physician  to 
make  men  to  be  what  they  ought  to  be  physically. 
The  mission  of  the  church,  in  the  last  analysis, 
as  we  have  said,  begins  and  ends  with  the  indi- 
vidual, and  that  mission  can  only  be  described,  as 
Prof.  Patten  describes  it,  as  the  endeavoiir  "to 
make  men  normal."  But  how  can  you  expect 
men,  living  together  in  the  close-knit  fabric  of 
modem  society,  to  be  what  they  ought  to  be,  if 
beset  on  every  hand  by  conditions  of  life  and 
labour,  which  inevitably  tend  to  reduce  them  to 
levels  lower  than  those  occupied  by  the  beasts  of 


Church  and  Social  Question       175 

the  field?  How  can  you  expect  men  to  be  "nor- 
mal," who  are  denied  fresh  air  and  sunlight,  robbed 
of  rest  and  recreation,  condemned  to  live  under 
conditions  which  make  decent  privacy  impossible 
and  the  ordinary  affections  of  the  heart  a  mock- 
ery? Why  talk  about  normality  of  body  and  mind 
and  soul  under  industrial  and  living  conditions 
such  as  are  the  commonplace  of  our  great  modem 
centres  of  population?  Is  there  not  a  wealth  of  prac- 
tical wisdom  in  the  remark  of  the  rough  peasant 
in  Charles  Kingsley's  "Alton  Locke?" — "Oh,  re- 
ligion 's  all  very  well  for  them  as  has  time  for  it.  But 
I  don't  see  how  a  man  can  hear  sermons  with  an 
empty  belly;  and  there  's  so  much  to  fret  a  man 
now,  and  he  's  so  cruel  tired  coming  home  o' nights, 
he  can't  nowise  go  to  pray  a  lot,  as  gentlefolks 
does."  It  is  true  that  the  concern  of  religion, 
to-day  as  always,  is  with  the  individual.  But  it  is 
not  with  any  particular  part  of  the  individual, 
either  heart  or  soul  or  spirit — whatever  these  sepa- 
rate terms  may  mean — but,  as  Mr.  Baker  has 
pointed  out,  in  the  case  of  bodily  healing,  it  is 
"with  the  whole  man";  and  this  means  his  mind 
and  his  body,  and  above  all  things  else,  his  infi- 
nitely complicated  social  relationships.  In  other 
words,  this  individual  whom  the  church  desires  to 
save — and  this  is  the  crucial  point,  as  we  have  been 
seeing  all  along! — is  a  social  creature,  and  there- 
fore must  be  reached,  if  he  is  to  be  reached  at  all, 
through  the  conditions  of  the  social  environment. 
Which  means  in  this  age  at  least,  whatever  may 


176  Function  of  the  Church 

be  said  of  earlier  and  less  complex  periods  of  social 
history,  that  the  function  of  the  church  must  be 
primarily  social  and  not  individual.  And  it  is  just 
this  thought  which  is  now  sweeping  over  the 
churches  of  all  denominations  and  causing  that 
"spiritual  unrest"  which  is  so  conspicuous  a 
characteristic  of  our  time. 

Signs  multiply  [says  Prof.  Graham  Taylor]  that 
the  churches  are  beginning  to  feel  the  inconsist- 
ency of  longer  remaining  silent  or  inactive  in  facing 
industrial  conditions  which  are  incompatible  with 
the  ideals  of  religion.  They  seem  to  be  increasingly 
aware  that  it  does  not  fulfil  the  function  of  religion 
in  the  world  for  the  churches  to  confine  their  atten- 
tion and  effort  to  the  individual  soul,  in  the  hope 
that  individuals  who  are  religiously  brought  up  will 
make  society  what  it  ought  to  be.  They  are  learning 
not  only  that  good  people  make  society  better,  but 
also  that  better  social  and  industrial  conditions  help 
make  men,  women,  and  children  good.  So,  in  order 
to  realise  their  ideals  in  individual  lives,  as  well  as  in 
communities,  nations,  and  in  the  world  at  large,  the 
churches  are  taking  very  definite  attitude  and  very 
overt  action  regarding  social  and  industrial  conditions 
confronting  them. 

This  is  the  whole  aim  and  purpose  of  the  church 
to-day — this  shifting  from  the  individual  to  society 
— from  the  members  to  the  body,  to  use  Paul's 
phrase.  And  it  is  this  shifting,  as  I  need  not  point 
out,  which  constitutes  the  revolutionary  character 


Church  and  Social  Question       177 

of  this  new  gospel  of  a  social  religion — revolu- 
tionary, it  should  be  said,  from  at  least  two  points 
of  view! 

(i)   The  New  Conception  of  the  Function  of  the 
Church 

In  the  first  place,  it  means  a  wholly  new  concep- 
tion of  the  distinctive  function  of  the  church.  In 
the  past,  the  church  has  been  regarded  as  a  more 
or  less  passive  witness  of  salvation;  in  the  future 
it  will  be  regarded  as  an  active  agent  of  salvation. 
In  the  past,  it  has  been  the  body  of  those  who  have 
been  saved  from  the  evils  of  the  world ;  in  the  future 
it  will  be  the  body  of  those  who  are  saviours  of  the 
world  from  the  evils  which  assail  it.  In  the  past, 
it  has  been  a  place  of  refuge,  where  men  could  flee 
for  safety ;  in  the  future  it  will  be  an  armoury,  where 
men  may  come  to  arm  themselves  against  "the 
rulers  of  the  darkness  of  the  world."  For  centu- 
ries, the  church  has  been  a  place  where  men  have 
come  for  the  help  which  they  themselves  might 
receive.  They  have  sought  strength  in  the  hour  of 
weakness,  light  in  the  hour  of  darkness,  consola- 
tion in  the  hour  of  sorrow  and  disappointment. 
They  have  come  to  God's  altars  that  they  might 
escape  "the  tumult  and  the  shouting"  of  the 
world,  and  find  rest  unto  their  souls.  Now  this 
service  of  bringing  relief  to  the  weary  and  heavy- 
laden  the  church  will  always  offer,  just  as  the 
battleship  will  always  have  its  hospital  ward;  but 


178  Function  of  the  Church 

this  function  will  always  be  subordinate  to  its  new 
and  greater  function.  I  see  already  the  coming 
of  a  day  when  men  will  come  to  the  church  not  for 
what  they  can  receive  but  for  what  they  can  give; 
not  to  be  entertained  or  instructed  or  uplifted,  but 
to  be  equipped  in  the  whole  armour  of  God,  that 
they  may  again  venture  forth  to  die  for  the 
redemption  of  mankind ;  not  to  flee  from  the  world, 
but  to  prepare  themselves  to  enter  into  the  world 
to  serve  as  good  soldiers  of  the  Lord.  Not  the 
company  of  the  saints,  not  the  assembly  of  the 
converted,  not  "the  congregation  of  the  right- 
eous," not  a  club  of  people  who  like  to  be  together 
and  worship  together  and  pray  together,  but  a 
great  host  of  servants  of  the  common  good,  of 
saviours  of  humanity,  of  fighters  of  the  good  fight 
for  justice,  righteousness,  and  peace — this  is  the 
new  church  of  the  new  age! 

(2)  The  Indefinite  Extension  of  the  Field  of  Re- 
ligious Activity 

In  the  second  place,  the  gospel  of  social  salvation 
involves  an  indefinite  extension  of  the  field  of 
religious  activity.  In  the  past,  as  we  have  seen, 
the  church  has  concerned  itself  with  certain  par- 
ticular problems  of  the  individual  life,  and  beyond 
that  it  has  not  dared  to  trespass.  Here,  within  a 
very  circumscribed  area,  was  the  field  of  religion, 
and  from  every  other  field  of  human  life,  religion 
was  ruthlessly  excluded.      Confronted,  however, 


Church  and  Social  Question        179 

by  the  new  task  of  redeeming  the  social  order, 
religion  must  become  of  universal  appUcation.  It 
must  enter  into  every  field  by  virtue  of  the  fact 
that  its  task  is  to  save  not  the  individual  apart  by 
himself,  but  the  individual  in  all  of  his  social  rela- 
tionships as  an  organised  part  of  the  social  whole. 
Every  question  becomes  thus  at  bottom  a  religious 
question  and  all  work  for  human  betterment  re- 
ligious work.  Charged  with  the  duty  of  saving  the 
world — or,  as  Jesus  put  it,  of  bringing  in  the  King- 
dom of  God  upon  the  earth — the  church  will  fear- 
lessly grapple  with  the  problem  of  poverty.  It  will 
accept  the  doctrine  of  the  best  social  authorities 
of  our  time,  that  poverty  is  due  not  to  individual 
depravity  or  inefficiency,  but  to  social  maladjust- 
ment; and  upon  the  basis  of  this  doctrine  will  so 
readjust  social  conditions,  that  poverty  will  be  as 
impossible  as  wealth.  The  church  will  enter  into 
the  field  of  industry,  and  constrain  the  controlling 
forces  of  labour  and  capital  to  cease  their  warfare 
and  unite  upon  a  common  platform  of  mutual  co- 
operation. The  church  will  enter  into  the  realm  of 
business,  and  insist  upon  its  complete  moralisa- 
tion.  Since  no  man  can  serve  two  masters  it  will 
insist  that  God  be  served  in  the  mart  of  trade  as 
well  as  in  the  sanctuary,  and  God's  will  be  done 
in  every  commercial  transaction  as  well  as  in  every 
ecclesiastical  performance.  It  will  enter  into  the 
field  of  politics  and  purify  this  Augean  stable  of 
its  rottenness.  It  will  insist  that  the  city-hall 
and   the    state-capitol    and    the    court-house   be 


i8o  Function  of  the  Church 

as  sacred  a  shrine  as  the  cathedral,  and  the 
pubHc  servants  of  the  state  as  truly  the  minis- 
ters of  religion  as  the  priests  praying  before  the 
altars.  Moved  by  this  new  gospel  of  socialisa- 
tion, the  church  will  care  not  so  much  for  rites  of 
baptism  as  for  public  baths  and  playgrounds;  not 
so  much  for  the  service  of  Communion  at  the  altar, 
as  for  that  wider  communion  at  every  hearth- 
stone which  shall  give  bread  to  all  who  hunger  and 
drink  to  all  who  thirst;  not  so  much  for  clerical 
robes  and  choir  vestments,  as  for  clothing  for  all 
who  are  naked;  not  so  much  for  splendid  churches 
and  towering  cathedrals,  as  for  decent  and  com- 
fortable homes  for  all  men,  women,  and  children; 
not  so  much  for  an  atmosphere  of  prayer  and  wor- 
ship in  the  church  edifice,  as  for  fresh  air  to  breathe 
in  the  tenements  and  slums;  not  so  much  for 
teaching  men  to  believe  as  for  giving  them  means 
wherewith  to  live ;  not  so  much  for  keeping  Sunday 
inviolate  from  open  theatres  and  concert-halls  and 
sports,  as  for  keeping  every  day  inviolate  from 
dishonest  stock-transactions,  piratical  business 
deals,  child  labour,  starvation  wages,  preventable 
diseases,  selfish  wealth  and  grinding  poverty;  not 
so  much  for  saving  the  heathen  over  seas  as  for 
saving  the  Christians  who  are  perishing  at  our 
very  doors;  not  so  much  for  emancipating  men 
from  what  we  call  sin,  as  for  emancipating  them 
from  the  conditions  of  life  and  labour  which  make 
sin  inevitable;  not  so  much  for  saving  souls,  as  for 
saving  the  society  which  moulds  the  soul  for  eter- 


Church  and  Social  Question        i8i 

nal  good  or  ill.  In  pursuit  of  its  work  of  social 
salvation,  the  church  will  enter  thus  into  every 
field  of  human  life,  and  will  seek  the  extirpation  of 
its  misery,  the  elimination  of  its  evil,  and  the 
righting  of  its  wrongs.  So  long  as  the  individual 
was  regarded  as  a  separate  spiritual  entity,  apart 
from  ail  things  else,  it  was  entirely  possible  to 
assert  that  religion  constituted  a  separate  field  of 
human  activity,  and  that  religious  work  had  to 
do  with  very  special  areas  of  human  experience. 
When  the  individual  is  seen  correctly,  however,  as 
only  a  part  of  the  social  organism,  then,  in  the 
very  pursuit  of  its  chosen  work  of  salvation,  re- 
ligion enters  into  every  sphere  of  action  and  becomes 
coincident  with  life.  From  the  standpoint  of  the 
new  conception  of  social  salvation,  therefore,  the 
church  has  a  right  to  deal  with  all  problems  of 
industry,  business,  and  politics.  "The  field  is  the 
world"  in  a  truer  sense  than  it  has  ever  been 
understood  before.  "Every  question  between  men 
is  a  religious  question,"  says  Henry  D.  Lloyd,  "a 
question  of  moral  economy  before  it  is  a  question 
of  political  economy — and  all  political,  industrial, 
and  social  activities  functions  of  the  church." 
There  is  not  a  question,  therefore,  which  the  minis- 
ter has  not  a  right — nay,  an  obligation — to  discuss 
in  his  pulpit  in  the  name  simply  of  religion.  There 
is  not  a  task  of  practical  reform  which  the  members 
of  the  church  have  not  a  right — nay,  an  obligation 
— to  undertake  in  the  name  of  religion.  The 
church  is  concerned  with  saving  the  individual; 


1 82  Function  of  the  Church 

the  individual  exists  only  in  his  social  relationships ; 
the  individual  can  be  saved  only  as  his  social 
relationships  are  saved.  Therefore,  in  pursuit  of 
its  one  true  task,  the  church  is  vitally  concerned 
with  every  social  relationship  of  men.  Theodore 
Parker  had  exactly  this  idea  of  social  salvation  in 
mind,  when  he  said:  "Religion  is  the  natiu'al  ruler 
in  all  the  commonwealth  of  man.  Therefore  have 
I  always  taught  the  supremacy  of  religion  and  its 
commanding  power  in  every  relation  of  human 
life." 

(C)-   JESUS     AS     THE      PROPHET      OF     SOCIALISED 
RELIGION 

And  this,  as  we  should  now  point  out  without 
further  delay,  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the 
true  realisation  in  this  modem  age  of  the  life- 
purpose  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  We  have  already 
seen  that  Jesus,  in  the  last  analysis,  was  the  su- 
preme individualist  of  history,  and  that  his  one 
absolutely  original  contribution  to  the  world's 
thought  was  that  of  the  perfect  sanctity  of  the 
soul.  But  the  significance  of  this  exaltation  of 
the  individual  and  its  application  to  the  actual 
problems  of  human  life,  in  Jesus'  day  as  in  our 
own,  has  never  been  properly  understood.  In 
short  it  IS  not  too  much  to  assert  that  the  world, 
almost  from  the  very  day  of  Jesus'  death,  has 
cherished  an  utterly  distorted  idea  of  the  distinc- 
tive character  of  his  life. 


Church  and  Social  Question        183 

We  think  of  Jesus  at  the  present  time,  as  all 
men  have  thought  of  him  for  ages  past,  as  a  man 
of  infinite  compassion  and  affection.  We  think  of 
him  as  one  whose  heart  was  open  to  the  sorrows 
of  mankind  and  whose  hand  was  ever  ready  to 
help  and  serve  their  needs.  We  think  of  him  as  one 
who  journeyed  from  place  to  place — yea,  from 
house  to  house — speaking  words  of  consolation 
to  hearts  that  were  sore  stricken  with  sorrow 
and  disappointment — lifting,  by  the  mere  con- 
tagion of  his  marvellous  personality,  heavy  bur- 
dens that  were  grievous  to  be  borne — bringing 
companionship  to  those  who  were  lonely  and 
distressed — bringing  strength  to  those  who  were 
weak  against  temptation — lifting  up  those  who 
were  fallen  into  sin,  and  with  words  of  pardon 
and  encouragement  sending  them  forward  upon 
their  way — forgetting  himself,  and  living  from 
day  to  day  for  the  sake  ot  others.  Above  all,  we 
think  of  him  as  the  great  and  inspiring  teacher  of 
religion,  who  revealed  to  the  faltering  gaze  of  men 
the  reality  of  the  living  God,  and  pointed  them  to 
the  promise  of  the  eternal  life.  We  think  of  him 
as  the  gentle,  kindly,  helpful  friend  of  mankind— as 
"the  joyous  comrade,"  the  "master  of  the  art  of 
living,"  the  "first  true  gentleman,"  the  "saviour," 
the  "redeemer,"  the  "good  shepherd,"  to  quote 
only  a  few  of  the  classic  phrases  which  have  been 
applied  to  him  in  the  ages  past.  He  appears  to  us 
always,  in  his  personal  relations  with  the  men  and 
women  who  were  about  him,   as  a  friend  who 


184  Function  of  the  Church 

encouraged  them  with  the  gift  of  his  abiding  love, 
as  a  teacher  who  taught  them  how  to  Hve,  as  a 
prophet  who  aroused  them  to  a  sense  of  sin  and 
inspired  them  to  a  yearning  after  virtue,  as  a  seer 
who  tore  aside  the  veil  which  divides  the  visible 
from  the  invisible,  and  brought  men  face  to  face 
with  God.  Name  Jesus,  and  we  think  of  the  man 
who  spoke  the  Beatitudes,  laid  down  the  Golden 
Rule,  defined  the  two  great  commandments  of 
the  law,  and  told  the  tale  of  the  Good  Samaritan. 
We  think  of  the  man  who  healed  the  sick,  raised 
the  dead,  redeemed  the  sinful.  We  think  of  the 
man  who  helped  the  poor  widow  of  Nain,  was  not 
unmindful  of  the  appeal  of  the  Roman  centurion, 
lifted  up  the  fallen  Mary  of  Magdala,  opened  his 
arms  in  welcome  to  the  little  children,  and  was 
able  so  to  love  even  his  enemies  that  he  could  pray 
to  God  to  forgive  those  who  had  betrayed  him  and 
nailed  him  to  the  cross.  This  is  the  universal  idea 
of  Jesus  to-day,  and  it  is  in  this  conception  of  the 
Nazarene  that  the  world  finds  strength  and  inspi- 
ration. He  has  taught  us  how  to  live,  and  shown 
us  the  path  in  which  our  feet  should  walk.  He  has 
taught  us  how  to  love  and  serve  and  help.  Above 
all,  he  has  lifted  our  eyes  above  the  things  of 
earth  and  shov/n  us  God,  the  Father;  and  con- 
vinced us,  therefore,  that  we  have  nothing  to  fear, 
since  God  is  with  us. 

Now  this  idea  of  Jesus,  I  believe,  is  perfectly 
correct,  as  far  as  it  goes.  But  it  does  not  go  far 
enough!     Jesus  was  all  that  has  been  described 


Church  and  Social  Question        185 

above,  but  he  was  something  more  than  this 
besides.  Here  was  a  consummate  personality, 
a  marvellous  teacher,  an  inspired  prophet  of  God; 
and  I  for  one  am  inclined  to  doubt  if  we  have 
exhausted  all  the  fulness  of  his  divine  perfection, 
when  we  have  described  him  simply  as  a  man  who 
loved  and  served  his  fellow-men  and  revealed  to 
their  souls  the  reality  of  God.  Is  there  not  some- 
thing more  in  the  career  of  this  wonderful  Nazarene 
than  a  mere  example  of  individual  living;  did  not 
this  Hebrew  youth  do  something  more  than  merely 
reveal  the  spirit  in  which  men  and  women  are  to 
live  as  individuals  in  a  world  of  individuals;  was 
not  this  great  man,  whose  birth  marks  the  division 
between  ancient  and  modem  times  and  whose 
death  is  rightly  regarded  as  the  crowning  tragedy 
of  human  history,  something  more  than  a  teacher  of 
spiritual  truth,  something  more  than  a  revealer 
of  God,  something  more  even  than  "the  way,  the 
truth,  and  the  life"?  Have  we  described  all  that 
Jesus  did,  interpreted  all  that  he  said,  and  cxt 
plained  all  the  influence  which  he  has  exerted  upon 
humanity,  when  we  picture  him  merely  as  a  noble, 
self-sacrificing  teacher,  who  went  about  doing  good 
among  his  people,  and  revealing  to  them  by  word 
and  by  personal  example  the  secret  of  the  art  of 
living?  Must  we  not  find  something  more  here 
than  we  have  yet  discovered,  if  we  would  under- 
stand the  whole  truth  of  his  career? 

These  questions,  I  believe,  must  be  answered 
most  emphatically  in  the  affirmative — and  this, 


1 86  Function  of  the  Church 

for  one  reason  if  for  no  other !  How  otherwise  are 
we  to  explain  the  tragic  end  of  the  Nazarene's 
life — his  arrest  by  the  Jewish  high  priest,  his  trial 
by  the  Roman  provincial  governor,  and  his  public 
crucifixion  as  a  criminal  upon  the  hill  of  Calvary? 
Did  we  ever  stop  to  ask  ourselves  just  why  Jesus 
was  thus  violently  put  to  death?  Why,  if  Jesus 
was  only  a  patient,  gentle,  loving  man  who  was 
bent  upon  nothing  else  but  helping  other  men  to 
be  as  patient,  gentle,  and  loving  as  himself,  was 
the  whole  power  of  the  Jewish  church  upon  the 
one  hand  and  the  whole  power  of  the  Roman 
Empire  upon  the  other  united  to  crush  and  to 
destroy  him?  Why,  if  Jesus  was  only  a  simple 
moral  teacher,  trying  to  reform  and  regenerate 
the  individual  men  and  women  whom  he  met  on 
the  highways  and  by  the  lakesides  and  in  the 
villages  of  Palestine,  was  it  necessary  to  the  safety 
of  the  Jewish  hierarchy  and  even  to  the  security 
of  the  Roman  authority  in  the  East,  that  this 
inoffensive  prophet  of  the  soul  should  be  put  to 
death?  Governments  as  mighty  as  that  of  Rome 
in  the  age  of  Tiberius,  churches  as  great  as  that 
of  Jerusalem  in  the  priesthood  of  Caiaphas,  do 
not  seek  out  and  destroy  such  men  as  Jesus  is 
commonly  represented  to  have  been — not  even 
when  they  describe  themselves  as  Messiahs  and 
prophesy  the  approaching  end  of  all  things!  The 
whole  weight  of  imperial  and  ecclesiastical  dis- 
pleasure is  never  united  upon  a  man  who  is  merely 
preaching  the  Sermon  upon  the  Mount  and  telling 


Church  and  Social  Question       187 

the  parable  of  the  Good  Samaritan,  healing  disease 
and  comforting  sorrow,  telling  of  God  and  his 
infinite  compassion  for  mankind.  When  the  Em- 
peror and  the  High  Priest  join  hands  to  do  a  work  of 
murder,  we  may  be  sure  that  the  security  of  the 
throne  and  the  altar  are  both  at  stake.  Socrates 
was  made  to  drink  the  hemlock,  not  because  he 
was  a  teacher  of  logic  and  ethics,  but  because 
it  was  believed  that  he  was  systematically  under- 
mining the  foundations  of  the  Athenian  state. 
Savonarola  was  burned  in  the  public  square  of 
Florence,  not  because  he  was  an  enemy  of  the 
vices  of  the  people,  but  because  he  was  an  enemy 
of  Pope  Alexander  VI.  in  the  Vatican  at  Rome,  and 
an  enemy  of  the  De'  Medici  in  the  palaces  of  the 
Italian  metropolis.  Latimer  and  Ridley  were 
made  to  be  flaming  torches  to  illumine  the  darkness 
of  reactionary  England,  not  because  they  were 
faithful  pastors  of  their  flocks,  but  because  they 
were  hostile  to  the  Catholic  state  and  the  Catholic 
church.  Martyrdom  is  never  won  by  men  who 
accept  the  world  as  it  is,  bow  obediently  to  the 
powers  of  king  and  bishop,  and  are  content  to 
teach  their  people  to  be  pure  and  honest  in  their 
private  lives,  and  patient,  generous,  and  unselfish 
in  their  relations  with  one  another.  Martyrdom  is 
never  achieved  by  prophets  who  are  content  to 
speak  of  God  only  as  a  heavenly  Father,  and  who 
implore  their  followers  to  obey  the  will  of  God  as 
perfect  wisdom  and  perfect  love.  Martyrdom  is 
only  won  by  the  man  who  concerns  himself  not 


1 88  Function  of  the  Church 

alone  with  private  but  also  with  public  matters, 
who  is  interested  not  merely  to  regenerate  indi- 
viduals but  to  reform  society,  who  is  not  satisfied 
to  rebuke  the  weaknesses  and  sins  of  men,  but 
must  also  condemn  the  unrighteousness,  injustice, 
and  oppression  of  the  social  organism.  It  is  the 
man  who  criticises  not  men  but  institutions,  who 
seeks  to  reform  not  merely  the  individual  but  the 
church  in  which  the  individual  worships  and  the 
state  which  he  supports,  who  seeks  to  establish 
the  Kingdom  of  God  not  merely  in  the  recesses  of 
the  human  heart  but  also  in  the  streets  of  the  city 
and  the  highways  of  the  state,  in  the  temples  of 
worship  and  in  the  halls  of  administration, — it  is 
this  man  who  is  burned  as  a  heretic  or  crucified 
as  a  criminal !  And  when  we  see  Jesus,  after  only 
eighteen  months  or  so  of  public  preaching,  hanging 
upon  the  cross,  with  Roman  soldiery  dividing  his 
garments  between  them  and  Jewish  priests  hooting 
at  his  agony,  we  may  be  sure  that  he  had  been 
doing  something  more  in  those  few  months  of 
public  ministry  than  speaking  parables  and  teach- 
ing prayers,  healing  the  sick  and  redeeming  the 
fallen.  He  had  been  assailing,  with  the  divine  wrath 
of  a  hater  of  iniquity  and  a  lover  of  righteousness, 
the  social  offences  of  his  time,  for  which  priests 
and  governors  were  alike  responsible,  and  his 
wrath  had  blazed  with  such  fury  and  had  so  kin- 
dled the  hearts  of  those  who  had  listened  to  his 
flaming  words,  that  state  and  church  were  alike 
threatened    with    destruction     if    he    were    not 


Church  and  Social  Question       189 

speedily  silenced.  Hence  his  arrest  by  Caiaphas 
the  priest,  and  his  crucifixion  by  Pilate  the  pro- 
vincial governor — church  and  state  uniting  as  so 
many  times  before  and  so  many  times  since,  to 
crush  the  prophet  who  would  blot  out  their  trans- 
gressions and  shatter  their  oppression,  that  a 
weak  and  suffering  people  might  be  redeemed. 

There  must  be  something  more,  therefore,  in 
our  thought  of  Jesus  than  the  world  has  yet  dis- 
covered, if  the  overshadowing  fact  of  his  cruci- 
fixion at  the  hands  of  the  Jewish  church  and  the 
Roman  Empire  is  to  be  adequately  explained. 
And  the  experiences  of  human  history  in  other 
ages  and  other  places  are  calculated  to  convince 
us  that  this  "something  more"  lies  along  the  lines 
of  social  agitation,  of  a  ministry  to  the  outward 
institutions  of  society  as  well  as  to  the  inward 
souls  of  men.  And  if  we  turn  now  to  the  pages  of 
the  gospels,  which  contain  all  that  we  know  of  this 
great  man,  we  suddenly  discover  that  the  evi- 
dences of  this  fact  are  here  as  clear  before  our  eyes 
as  the  particles  of  gold  which  gleam  in  the  sand- 
beds  of  an  Alaskan  mountain  stream.  Read  the 
life  of  Jesus  as  it  should  be  read,  study  the  popular 
causes  which  he  espoused  and  the  social  ideals 
which  he  sought  to  make  real  upon  the  earth, 
observe  the  powers  of  class  and  state  and  church 
whose  oppressions  he  condemned  and  whose  privi- 
leges he  sought  to  destroy — and  we  are  made  to 
understand  speedily  enough  that  there  was  some- 
thing more  here  than  a  mere  teacher  of  men — that 


190  Function  of  the  Church 

here  was  an  heroic  reformer  of  society!  And  we 
are  made  to  see  also  that  his  path,  as  marked  out 
in  the  beginning  and  as  followed  bravely  to  the 
bitter  end,  led  as  straight  to  the  cross  of  Calvary 
as  the  footsteps  of  John  Brown  led  to  the  gallows 
of  Charlestown,  Virginia. 

First  of  all,  we  are  beginning  to  realise  that 
Jesus  proceeded  from  the  common  people,  that  he 
associated  all  his  life  with  the  common  people — 
the  fishers,  artisans,  farmers,  and  shepherds  of  his 
day — and  that  there  is  no  indication  that  anything 
ever  happened  in  his  career  "to  neutralise  the 
sense  of  class  solidarity  which  grows  up  under  such 
circumstances  as  these."  Furthermore,  the  com- 
mon people  of  that  day  were  also  the  poor  people, 
and  Jesus  was  poor  along  with  all  the  rest.  Says 
W.  M.  Thomson,  as  quoted  by  Prof.  Walter  Rau- 
schenbusch  in  his  **  Christianity  and  the  Social 
Crisis":  "Jesus  had  no  place  to  be  bom  in  but 
another  man's  stable,  no  closet  to  pray  in  but  the 
wilderness,  no  place  to  die  but  on  the  cross  of  an 
enemy,  and  no  grave  but  one  lent  by  a  friend." 
"The  birds  of  the  air  have  nests,"  said  Jesus, 
referring  to  his  own  condition,  * '  and  the  foxes  have 
holes,  but  the  Son  of  Man  hath  not  where  to  lay 
his  head."  Jesus  was  himself  poor,  he  associated 
with  the  poor,  he  gave  himself  to  the  service  of  the 
poor  and  he  sought  the  social  liberation  of  the  poor. 
How  else  are  we  to  explain  the  extraordinary  popu- 
larity of  his  preaching?  "The  multitudes  heard 
him  gladly,"  we  are  told;  they  followed  him  eagerly 


Church  and  Social  Question       191 

from  place  to  place;  they  gathered  about  him  in 
crowds  wherever  he  sat  down  to  teach;  men  left 
their  toil,  women  abandoned  their  household  cares, 
mothers  came  with  their  children  in  their  arms  or 
tugging  at  their  skirts,  that  they  might  stand  and 
Hsten  to  his  words.    And  who  can  doubt  that  they 
heard  him  thus  gladly  because  he  spoke  the  things 
that  were  in  their  hearts,  gave  voice  to  their  aspi- 
rations, confirmed  their  hopes,  and  promised  them 
relief  from  their  economic,  political,  and  ecclesiasti- 
cal burdens?    And  how  else  also  are  we  to  explain 
his  entry  into  Jerusalem,  with  the  crowd  surging 
about  him  and  hailing  him  rapturously   as  the 
Messiah;  or  explain  the  secret  arrest,  the  hasty 
trial,  the  anxious  and  careful  efforts  to  prejudice 
the  populace  against  him,  if  not  on  the  supposition 
that  he  was  the  idol  of  the  common  people,  and 
was  their  idol  because  he  was  leading  a  crusade  for 
their  emancipation   from   social   slavery?     They 
saw  in  this  man,  even  if  we  do  not,  something  more 
than  a  teacher  of  ethics  or  a  preacher  of  the  spirit- 
ual life — something  more  than  a  healer  of  disease, 
a  comforter  of  personal  sorrow,  and  a  revealer  of 
the  presence  of  Almighty  God.    They  saw  in  him 
a  man  who  was  indignant  at  the  industrial  oppres- 
sion, the  poHtical  tyranny,  and  the  ecclesiastical 
hypocrisy  of  the  age!    They  saw  a  man  who  was 
prepared  to  shatter  the  fetters  by  which  his  people 
were  bound  to  misery  and  degradation.    They  saw 
a  man  who  promised  to  all  who  had  ears  to  hear 
the  coming  of  a  better  time,  when  they  should  be 


192  Function  of  the  Church 

rescued  from  oppression,  and  be  free  to  live,  to 
labour,  and  to  love !  They  saw  a  man,  in  -short,  who 
was  eager  to  serve  them  and  not  plunder  them, 
eager  to  lift  them  up  and  not  cast  them  down, 
eager  to  set  them  free  and  not  bind  them  with  ever 
heavier  chains  of  privilege  and  power.  They  saw 
a  man  who  promised  that  the  Kingdom  of  God 
was  at  hand!  And  we  to-day,  to  hide  our  own 
perversity  and  blindness,  declare  that  they  mis- 
understood him,  and  interpreted  in  terms  of  the 
flesh  what  he  intended  should  be  interpreted  in 
terms  of  the  spirit ! 

But  not  only  do  we  know  that'Jesus  was  through- 
out his  life  one  of  the  common  people,  and  the  repre- 
sentative and  the  leader  of  the  common  people 
because  of  his  sympathy  with  their  aspirations 
for  deliverance,  but  there  is  also  an  abundance  of 
evidence  to  prove  that  Jesus  was  no  halfway 
reformer  in  his  attitude  toward  the  men  and  the  in- 
stitutions of  his  day.  Rightly  does  Prof.  Rauschen- 
busch  point  out  that  ''there  was  a  revolutionary 
consciousness  in  Jesus."  Jesus  understood  per- 
fectly well,  when  he  looked  upon  the  suffer- 
ings of  the  common  people  and  saw  the  political 
and  industrial  causes  of  this  suffering,  that  he  had 
come,  as  Rauschenbusch  puts  it,  to  kindle  a  fire 
upon  the  earth.  Much  as  he  was  devoted  to  peace, 
and  strongly  and  sincerely  as  he  preached  the 
idealistic  doctrine  of  non-resistance,  he  knew  that 
the  actual  result  of  his  work  would  be  "not  peace 
but  a  sword."    He  saw,  as  Garrison  saw  when  he 


Church  and  Social  Question       193 

began  the  anti-slavery  fight  in  this  coimtry, 
that  he  was  destined  to  divide  households 
and  sever  families,  to  separate  brother  from 
brother,  and  father  from  son.  Hence  the  bold- 
ness of  his  declaration:  '*He  that  loveth  father 
and  mother  more  than  me,  is  not  worthy  of  me"! 
He  proclaimed  without  hesitation  that  he  pro- 
posed to  turn  society  upside  down — to  make  the 
first  to  be  last  and  the  last  to  be  first.  He  asserted 
without  qualification  that  he  proposed  a  new  dis- 
tribution of  property — that  the  poor  should  be 
made  rich  and  the  rich  should  be  made  poor.  He 
declared  without  apology  that  the  things  which 
were  esteemed  before  men  were  an  abomination 
before  God,  and  that  these  things  he  was  deter- 
mined to  smite.  Even  in  the  Beatitudes,  which 
seem  to  breathe  the  very  essence  of  peace,  there 
sounds  the  martial  note  of  revolution.  "The  whole 
point  of  these  Beatitudes,"  says  Prof.  Rauschen- 
busch, 

is  that  henceforth  those  were  to  be  blessed  whom  the 
world  had  never  blessed  before,  for  the  Kingdom  of 
God  would  reverse  their  relative  standing.  Now  the 
poor  and  the  sad  and  the  hungry  were  to  be  satisfied 
and  comforted;  the  meek  who  had  been  shouldered 
aside  by  the  ruthless,  would  get  their  chance  to  in- 
herit the  earth ;  and  conflict  and  persecution  would  be 
inevitable  in  the  process. 

All  through  his   teaching,   in   short,   there    runs 
the  prophecy  of  social  change.     "The  Lord  hath 
13 


194  Function  of  the  Church 

anointed  me,"  said  Jesus,  at  the  very  outset 
of  his  work,  "to  preach  the  gospel  to  the  poor, 
to  heal  the  broken-hearted,  to  preach  deliver- 
ance to  the  captives,  and  to  set  at  liberty  them 
that  are  bruised."  And  later,  when  he  sent  forth 
his  disciples  to  do  this  very  work  which  he  had  thus 
described,  he  told  them  that  he  knew  that  this 
work  was  so  perilous  that  he  knew  he  sent  them 
forth  "as  sheep  in  the  midst  of  wolves" — they 
should  be  hated  of  all  men,  but  that  they  must 
endure  even  imto  the  end. 

If  we  would  really  understand  the  spirit  which 
was  in  Jesus  and  appreciate  the  full  extent  of  what 
Prof.  Rauschenbusch  calls  his  "revolutionary 
consciousness,"  we  have  only  to  see  the  attitude 
which  he  assumed  toward  those  classes  of  the 
population  of  his  day  which  he  held  responsible 
for  the  miseries  of  the  people.  These  classes  were 
three:  first,  the  wealthy  aristocracy;  second,  the 
ecclesiastical  aristocracy;  and  third,  the  political 
aristocracy.  Nothing  is  more  amusing,  and  at  the 
same  time  more  disheartening  than  the  attempts 
which  have  been  made  in  all  ages  to  gloss  over 
and  explain  away  the  utterances  of  Jesus  upon 
the  subject  of  great  wealth.  If  there  is  anything 
perfectly  clear  in  the  gospels,  it  is  the  Nazarene's 
unconditional,  uncompromising,  straight  -  from- 
the-shoulder  denunciation  of  riches.  Jesus  did 
not  hate  the  rich  as  individuals,  nor  did  he 
denounce  them  as  individuals — a  mistake  made 
by  many  an  agitator  both  before  and  since  his 


Church  and  Social  Question       195 

time.  Nothing  is  more  touching,  for  example,  than 
the  story  of  the  rich  young  man,  whom  Jesus 
instructed  to  sell  all  his  goods  and  give  them  to 
the  poor  as  the  sole  condition  of  his  entrance  upon 
eternal  life,  wherein  the  gospel  writer  tells  us  that 
the  Master  looked  upon  the  young  man,  whose 
wealth  he  thus  declared  must  be  destroyed,  and 
looking  upon  him,  loved  him!  It  was  wealth  as  a 
social  condition,  wealth  as  a  goal  to  the  ambitions 
of  men,  wealth  as  a  source  of  power  over  the  lives 
of  other  men,  wealth  as  a  source  of  pride  and  luxury 
and  vice,  wealth  as  a  recognised  social  institution — 
it  was  this  and  this  alone  that  he  detested  and 
denounced.  No  man  ever  saw  clearer  than  did 
Jesus  that  wealth  was  inconsistent  with  true 
spiritual  life,  that  God  and  Mammon  could  not 
be  served  together  by  any  one  man,  that  wealth 
can  exist  only  upon  the  basis  of  poverty  and  pov- 
erty ended  only  by  a  more  equitable  distribution 
of  wealth.  The  Kingdom  of  God,  to  his  mind,  was 
a  fellowship  of  justice,  equality,  and  love ;  and  no 
man  ever  saw  more  distinctly  than  he  that  it  is 
almost  impossible  "to  get  riches  with  justice,  to 
keep  them  with  equality,  or  to  spend  them  with 
love."  Against  wealth,  therefore,  as  a  condition, 
against  wealth  as  the  corrupter  of  the  souls  of  those 
who  have  and  the  destroyer  of  the  bodies  of  those 
who  have  not,  against  wealth  as  the  basis  of  ine- 
quality and  injustice,  he  ceaselessly  inveighed, 
declaring  that  in  his  Kingdom  there  should  be 
no  wealth,  just  as  there  should  be  no  poverty,  and 


196  Function  of  the  Church 

that  the  first  step  of  entrance  into  the  Kingdom 
upon  the  part  of  the  rich  must  be  the  complete 
renunciation  of  their  great  possessions.  Remem- 
bering now  what  wealth  has  always  meant  to  the 
minds  of  men — ^remembering  the  power  it  has 
always  exerted  in  the  world's  history — remem- 
bering what  wealth  is  to-day  and  what  it  has 
always  been  as  a  social  institution — and  what  must 
we  think  of  Christ! 

Similar  also  was  Jesus'  attitude  toward  the 
religious  aristocracies  of  his  time,  an  attitude  which 
has  well  been  described  as  one  of  "revolutionary 
boldness  and  thoroughness."  Against  the  faithless 
priests  of  the  temple  he  hurled  such  anathemas  of 
wrath  as  have  seldom  passed  the  lips  of  any  man. 
He  called  them  hypocrites,  blind  leaders  of  the 
blind,  serpents,  generation  of  vipers,  the  children 
of  hell.  He  accused  them  of  being  guilty  of  "all 
manner  of  extortion  and  excess"  under  the  guise 
of  religious  service;  "devouring  widows'  houses," 
he  said,  "and  then  for  a  pretence  making  long 
prayers."  He  exposed  their  punctilious  solicitude 
for  the  non-essentials  of  religion,  "the  mint,  the 
anise,  and  the  cummin,"  and  their  utter  neglect 
of  "the  weightier  matters  of  the  law,  justice, 
mercy  and  faith."  Outwardly  righteous,  he  as- 
serted that  within  they  were  "full  of  hypocrisy  and 
iniquity,"  and  compared  them  to  "whited  sepul- 
chres," which  "appear  beautiful  without,  but 
within  are  full  of  dead  men's  bones  and  all  imclean- 
ness."     And  as  a  climax  to  his  denimciation  of 


Church  and  Social  Question       197 

these  priests  and  Pharisees,  he  pointed  to  the  de- 
spised publicans  who  gathered  the  taxes  from  the 
people  and  the  wretched  hariots  upon  the  public 
streets,  and  declared  that  these  miserable  outcasts 
had  a  truer  piety  than  theirs.  And  then,  at  the 
end,  standing  before  the  temple  upon  Mt.  Zion, 
he  dared  to  proclaim  that  that  temple  should  be 
destroyed  so  that  one  stone  should  not  stand  upon 
another — and  this  as  one  of  the  conditions  of  the 
coming  of  his  Kingdom!  Remembering  now  that 
the  organised  religion  of  that  day  was  still  the 
foundation  of  the  Jewish  state — remembering 
that  the  priests  and  scribes  and  Pharisees  were  the 
pillars  of  society — remembering  that  the  temple 
was  reverenced  even  by  the  common  people  as 
guarding  the  shrine  of  the  Holy  of  Holies, — and 
again,  what  must  we  think  of  Christ! 

In  the  same  revolutionary  attitude  do  we  find 
Jesus  placed  toward  the  political  powers  of  his  day. 
Speaking  of  Herod,  the  king,  he  referred  to  him  as 
* '  that  fox. ' '  Holding  the  coin  of  Ccesar  in  his  hand, 
he  instructed  the  people  to  render  the  wretched 
money  unto  Caesar,  if  Csesar  wanted  it,  but  for 
them  to  hold  fast  not  imto  the  things  of  Csesar 
but  unto  the  things  of  God.  Pointing  in  scorn  and 
derision  at  the  political  aristocracy  of  the  time, 
he  is  reported  to  have  said:  "Ye  know  that  they 
which  are  supposed  to  rule  over  the  nations,  lord 
it  over  them,  and  their  great  ones  tyrannise  over 
them.  Thus  shall  it  not  be  among  you."  And 
describing  the    last  judgment  of    the  world,   he 


198,'  Function  of  the  Church 

pictured  the  destruction  of  all  the  nations  of  the 
earth — Rome,  of  course,  among  the  rest — and 
asserted  that  the  Kingdom  of  God  should  be 
builded  upon  the  wreckage  of  the  kingdoms  of 
men.  Remembering  now  the  power  of  the  Caesars 
of  that  age — remembering  the  imiversal  and  appa- 
rently eternal  dominion  of  imperial  Rome — 
remembering  the  omnipotence  of  this  state  which 
plundered  them  with  ruthless  cruelty, — and  again, 
what  shall  we  think  of  Christ! 

What  shall  we  think  indeed?  Is  not  the  mission 
of  his  life  now  plain?  It  is  true  that  Jesus  was  an 
individualist,  in  the  sense  that  he  recognised,  as 
Emerson  says,  "for  the  first  time  in  history  the 
real  greatness"  of  man,  and  thus  had  supreme 
interest  in  the  integrity  and  welfare  of  this  man. 
It  is  true  that  he  was  the  gentle,  kindly,  sympa- 
thetic friend  of  his  suffering  and  sinful  fellows. 
It  is  true  that  he  was  deeply  concerned  by  the 
trials  and  tribulations,  the  burdens  and  sorrows, 
of  private  life.  It  is  true  that  he  was  the  revealer 
to  the  minds  of  men  of  the  heavenly  Father,  and 
the  true  prophet  to  their  hearts  of  the  immortal 
life.  No  man  ever  served  the  needs  of  other  men 
as  did  he.  No  man  ever  shared  their  sorrows  or 
lifted  their  biudens  as  did  he.  No  man  ever  proved 
to  be  so  great  an  inspiration  to  others,  as  they 
faced  the  problems  and  perplexities  and  tempta- 
tions of  their  individual  lives,  as  did  he.  Jesus  was 
all  this,  as  we  have  seen !  But  just  because  he  was 
this,  he  was  obliged  also  to  be  something  more. 


Church  and  Social  Question       199 

With  the  clear  insight  of  the  great  teacher,  he  saw 
instantly  the  inevitable  relationship  between  the 
individual  and  the  social  organism,  and  the  inevi- 
table dependence  in  greater  or  less  degree  of  the 
former  upon  the  latter.  He  saw  how  the  men  and 
women  of  his  day  were  oppressed  and  persecuted 
and  burdened.  He  saw  how  fully  they  were  the 
victims  of  social  disorder  and  injustice,  and  to  what 
an  extent  therefore  their  weaknesses  and  sins  were 
the  result  not  of  inward  impulses  to  evil  but  of  out- 
ward external  conditions  of  degradation.  And  just 
because  he  loved  and  pitied  and  believed  in  the 
individual,  and  desired  to  emancipate  and  save 
him,  he  saw  himself  forced  more  and  more,  as 
time  went  on,  to  enter  upon  a  crusade  of  social 
redemption.  His  very  endeavour  to  help  this  man 
and  to  relieve  this  woman  and  to  free  this  Httle 
child  brought  him  into  immediate  conflict  with  the 
established  institutions  of  church  and  state,  and 
thus  transformed  him,  almost  in  spite  of  himself 
I  bcHeve,  into  the  militant  reformer  and  heroic 
martyr.  I  do  not  for  a  moment  mean  to  imply 
that  Jesus  worked  out  in  his  own  thought  any  such 
philosophy  of  the  socialised  individual  as  has  been 
worked  out  in  our  day.  But  I  most  certainly  do 
mean  to  imply  that,  in  the  course  of  his  practical 
endeavour  for  the  individual,  he  was  carried  on, 
like  every  other  true  servant  of  humanity  in  every 
age,  beyond  the  individual  to  the  environing  so- 
ciety. And  nothing  so  fully  proves,  to  my  mind,  the 
essential  soundness  of  this  new  social  philosophy 


200  Function  of  the  Church 

of  our  time,  as  this  repeated  experience  of  every 
undaunted  friend  of  human  kind. 

Thus  are  we  coming  at  last  to  a  true  understand- 
ing of  the  life  and  teaching  of  the  great  Nazarene ! 
Jesus  was  not  only  the  friend  of  man,  but  he  was 
also  "the  servant  of  a  new  himianity."  He  was  not 
only  a  prophet  of  religious  truth,  but  an  instigator 
of  social  reform.  In  the  words  of  Desmoulins, 
he  was  "the  first  sans-culotte " ;  or,  as  Charles 
Kingsley  has  put  it,  "the  first  true  demagogue"! 
In  this  sense,  he  was  concerned  not  only  with  the 
sins  of  individuals,  but  also  with  the  evils  of  insti- 
tutions. He  was  interested  not  only  in  making 
this  man  and  that  man  a  true  son  of  God,  but,  in 
order  that  he  might  the  more  effectively  do  this 
very  thing,  he  was  also  interested  in  making  the 
society  into  which  men  were  organised  the  King- 
dom of  God.  In  other  words,  while  his  specific 
aim  was  undoubtedly  individual,  his  method  was 
as  undoubtedly  social.  He  was  at  bottom  an  agi- 
tator of  revolution!  He  refused  frankly  and  fear- 
lessly to  accept  the  world  as  he  found  it — he 
refused  to  believe  that  society  was  as  well  organised 
as  could  be  expected.  "He  refused  to  revere  the 
men  whom  it  called  great,  he  refused  to  respect 
the  institutions  which  it  regarded  as  final,"  he 
refused  to  conform  to  the  social  usages  and  customs 
which  it  regarded  as  imalterable,  he  refused  to 
cherish  the  moral  and  spiritual  ideals  which  it 
regarded  as  sacred  and  upon  which  it  had  reared 
the  whole  edifice  of  its  social  fabric.    He  nourished 


Church  and  Social  Question       201 

in  his  soul  the  vision  of  a  new  society,  "an  ideal," 
says  Prof.  Rauschenbusch,  "of  a  common  life  so 
radically  different  from  the  present,  that  it  in- 
volved a  reversal  of  values,  a  revolutionary  displace- 
ment of  existing  relations."  And  to  this  work  of 
destroying  the  old  society,  with  all  of  its  oppressive 
institutions,  its  corrupting  customs,  and  its  per- 
verted ideals,  and  of  bringing  in  a  new  society 
which  was  to  be  something  so  beautiful  and  inspir- 
ing and  hitherto  imheard  of  that  he  could  call  it 
nothing  less  than  the  Kingdom  of  God  come  down 
upon  the  earth — it  was  to  this  work,  as  the  very 
condition  of  that  of  helping  individual  men  to  live, 
that  he  dedicated  his  career.  Jesus,  therefore,  as 
the  saviour  of  men,  was  first  and  foremost  the 
inaugurator  of  a  new  social  and  political  order. 
He  was  not  primarily  the  teacher  of  theology,  nor 
the  builder  of  a  church,  nor  the  guide  to  a  way  of 
life — he  was  more  than  all  things  else  the  champion 
of  a  great  movement  for  a  more  righteous  and  just 
social  order.  Caiaphas  and  Pilate  knew  what  they 
were  doing  when  they  put  the  Nazarene  to  death! 
Well  does  Prof.  Rauschenbusch  put  the  question, 
in  his  epoch-making  book  on  "Christianity  and 
the  Social  Crisis,"  "If  we  were  forced  to  classify 
Jesus  either  with  the  great  theologians  who  elabo- 
rated the  fine  distinctions  of  scholasticism,  or  with 
the  mighty  popes  and  princes  of  the  church  who 
built  up  their  power  in  his  name,  or  with  the  men 
who  are  giving  their  heart  and  life  to  the  propa- 
ganda of  a  new  social  system,  where  should  we 


202  Function  of  the  Church 

place  him?"  To  this  inquiry  there  can  be  but  a 
single  answer — and  an  answer,  as  I  need  not  now 
point  out,  wholly  in  accord  with  the  social  mes- 
sage of  our  age!* 

'  In  the  writing  of  this  entire  section  I  am  greatly  indebted 
to  the  second  chapter,  "The  Social  Aims  of  Jesus,"  of  Prof. 
Rauschenbusch's  book.  This  is  to  my  mind  the  most  original  and 
convincing  interpretation  of  the  Nazarene's  career  which  has 
yet  appeared.  See  also  Bouck  White's  stirring  volume,  en- 
titled "The  Call  of  the  Carpenter,"  which  appears  as  this  is 
passing  through  the  press.  Nor  must  I  fail  to  speak  in  this  con- 
nection of  Charles  Rann  Kennedy's  wonderful  allegorical  drama, 
"The  Servant  in  the  House."  Here  is  the  traditional  Christ- 
ianity of  creeds  and  liturgies  and  narrow  individualistic 
interests  brought  face  to  face  with  the  spirit  of  the  real  Jesus  of 
Nazareth,  the  rebuilder  of  the  social  order.  In  the  deaf  and 
blind  Bishop  do  we  see  the  extreme  embodiment  of  the  old 
religion  which  is  passing,  and  in  Manson  the  Servant  the 
extreme  embodiment  of  the  new  religion  which  is  yet  to  come ! 


CHAPTER  VII 

OBSTACLES  IN  THE  WAY  OF  THE  SOCIALISED 
CHURCH 

THE  new  religion,  therefore,  like  the  new  medi- 
cine and  the  new  philanthropy,  must  be  con- 
cerned primarily  with  society  and  not  with  the 
individual — or  with  the  individual  only  as  he  is 
interpreted  in  social  terms;  and  the  new  minister, 
like  the  new  physician  and  the  new  charity  worker, 
must  be  first  and  foremost  a  reformer  of  social 
conditions — a  militant  reconstructor  of  the  social 
fabric.  Signs  of  the  coming  change  in  this  direc- 
tion in  the  religious  world  are  all  about  us,  as  Prof. 
Graham  Taylor  has  said ;  but  it  is  not  to  be  expec- 
ted that  the  new  religion  of  socialisation  will  make 
any  such  sure  and  rapid  progress  as  the  movement 
for  socialisation  in  other  fields  of  human  endeavour. 
The  church,  in  all  ages  and  coimtries,  has  always 
been  the  most  conservative  of  organisations;  and 
Christianity  in  particular  seems  grievously  handi- 
capped by  ecclesiastical  traditions  and  theological 
misconceptions  which  will  make  the  entrance  of 
the  church  upon  this  new  field  of  social  redemp- 
tion an  exceedingly  slow  and  painful  process.  In 
order  to  understand  satisfactorily  the  question  as 
to  why  the  Christian  church,  in  spite  of  the  wonder- 

203 


204  Function  of  the  Church 

ful  social  impulse  behind  it  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
and  the  long  line  of  the  earlier  Jewish  prophets 
from  Amos  to  John  the  Baptist,  has  never  been 
an  active  social  force  in  the  past,  and  is  to-day 
destined  in  all  probability  to  enter  all  too  tardily 
upon  the  work  of  reforming  social  conditions,  it 
would  be  necessary  to  survey  the  whole  history 
of  Christianity  from  the  fourth  century  a.d.  to  the 
present  moment.  It  would  require  such  an  elabo- 
rate study  as  Prof.  Walter  Rauschenbusch  has 
given  us  in  the  fourth  chapter  of  his  "Christianity 
and  the  Social  Crisis,"  which  he  entitles  "Why  has 
Christianity  never  Entered  upon  the  Work  of 
Social  Reconstruction?"  We  should  have  to  show 
how  the  early  church  was  almost  wholly  diverted 
from  the  original  social  gospel  of  Jesus  and  the 
Jewish  prophets  by  the  expectation  of  the  second 
coming  and  the  approaching  end  of  the  world,  by 
the  extraordinary  personal  influence  of  Paul  and 
his  school,  by  the  historical  accidents  attending 
the  particular  relationship  existing  between  the 
government  of  the  Roman  Empire  and  the  early 
church,  by  the  alienations  existing  between  the 
early  Christian  communities  and  the  heathendom 
in  which  they  found  themselves  involved,  by  the 
growing  absorption  of  the  church  in  matters  of 
sacrament  and  dogma,  by  the  obsession  of  the 
early  Christian  consciousness  with  a  philosophy 
of  the  salvation  of  a  lost  individual  in  another 
world,  and  so  on  indefinitely!  It  must  suffice, 
however,  in  this  regard,   simply  to  assert  that, 


Obstacles  to  Socialised  Church     205 

within  two  centimes  after  the  death  of  Jesus,  the 
social  significance  of  the  Master's  teaching  and 
example  had  been  almost  wholly  lost,  and  the 
church  become  what  we  have  already  described 
it — an  instrument  for  saving  the  individual  out  of 
the  world ;  and  pass  on  at  once  to  the  consideration 
of  the  present  situation  of  the  church,  and  the 
conditions  now  militating  against  its  immediate 
and  complete  identification  with  the  new  social 
movements  of  the  time. 

(a)  the  philosophy  of  individualism 

First  and  foremost,  of  course,  is  that  theory  of 
individualism  which  is  the  distinctive  feature  of 
traditional  Christianity  in  all  of  its  branches,  and 
which  has  already  been  described  at  length  in  this 
book.  The  church  has  always  looked  upon  the 
individual  in  the  past  as  an  isolated  entity,  having 
only  a  temporary,  fortuitous,  and  wholly  inconse- 
quential relation  to  the  social  environment;  and 
this,  as  I  need  not  point  out  again,  is  its  prevailing 
philosophy  to-day.  And  so  long  as  this  appre- 
hension of  the  nature  of  the  individual  life  is 
dominant,  it  is  almost  hopeless  to  expect  any  very 
keen  recognition  upon  the  part  of  the  church  of  its 
social  responsibilities  and  obligations.  Ftmda- 
mental  to  the  adoption  by  organised  Christianity 
of  the  new  reHgion  of  socialisation  is  the  whole 
transformation  of  its  religious  philosophy  from 
the  individualistic  conceptions  of  yesterday  to  the 


2o6  Function  of  the  Church 

socialistic  conceptions  of  to-day;  and  until  this 
transformation  takes  place,  there  is  little  hope  of 
the  establishment  of  the  new  church  described 
above. 

Other  facts  of  very  real  significance,  however, 
still  further  complicate  the  problem  of  this  revo- 
lutionary transition. 

(b)  denominationalism 

Of  great  influence,  for  example,  is  the  evil  of 
denominationalism,  by  which  I  mean  the  dividing 
of  "the  church  universal"  into  sects  or  hostile 
parties  by  reason  of  differences  of  theological 
opinion.  In  the  world  of  Christendom  to-day, 
we  see  hundreds  of  differing  sects,  each  concerned 
primarily  not  with  the  worship  of  God  and  the 
service  of  man,  but  with  the  establishment  of  its 
own  private  and  patented  and  copyrighted  inter- 
pretation of  Christian  doctrine.  Church  is  arrayed 
against  church, minister  against  minister,  in  no  more 
serious  differences  than  the  translation  of  a  Biblical 
text  or  the  hair-splitting  quibble  of  a  theological 
distinction,  neither  of  which  has  any  conceivable 
relation  to  the  living  issues  of  the  day.  This  di- 
vision of  Christianity  into  an  innumerable  variety 
of  denominations  has  had — and  will  continue  to 
have — two  most  lamentable  social  consequences. 
In  the  first  place,  it  has  diverted  the  attention  of 
the  churches  from  the  real  evils  of  organised  society 
to  the  unreal  evils  of  theological  error,  and  has 


Obstacles  to  Socialised  Church    207 

persuaded  the  churches  that  their  sole  duty  is  to 
propagate  their  own  particular  interpretation  of 
Christian  faith  and,  for  this  purpose,  to  strengthen 
their  own  sectarian  organisation.  That  society 
should  fall  into  the  hands  of  Methodists  or  Bap- 
tists or  Unitarians  has  aroused  the  churches  to  a 
veritable  crusade  of  opposition;  but  that  society 
should  fall  into  the  hands  of  poUtical  grafters  and 
money-mad  capitaHsts  and  war-crazed  statesmen 
has  been  contemplated  by  the  churches  with  com- 
parative indifference.  And  even  when  the  churches 
are  not  assailing  one  another,  but  are  living 
together  in  more  or  less  peace  and  harmony,  as  is 
to-day  more  and  more  coming  to  be  the  case,  they 
are  yet  paralysed  as  social  agencies  by  reason  of 
their  absorption  in  their  own  petty  sectarian 
affairs.  The  Presbyterian  churches  are  interested 
not  so  much  in  providing  for  the  social  welfare  of 
the  American  people  as  in  furthering  the  prosperity 
of  their  Presbyterian  missionary  organisations. 
The  great  boast  of  the  Methodist  church  is  not 
so  much  that  it  is  redeeming  American  political 
and  business  life  as  that  it  is  building  a  new  Method- 
ist church  every  day.  And  the  one  great  imited 
endeavour  of  the  Unitarian  churches,  in  spite  of 
their  pretensions  to  a  gospel  of  appHed  religion, 
is  not  the  serving  of  society  but  the  supporting  of 
a  missionary  association  which  is  devoted  to 
"maintaining  old  Unitarian  churches  whose  natu- 
ral lives  are  already  spent,  and  building  new 
Unitarian  churches  which  cannot  maintain  them- 


2o8  Function  of  the  Church 

selves."  Each  sect,  In  a  word,  is  so  concerned  in 
keeping  its  own  denominational  machinery  going 
and  in  solving  its  own  denominational  problems, 
that  it  has  little  time  or  strength  to  give  to  the 
machinery  of  society  and  to  the  solution  of  the 
vexing  problems  of  modem  social  life. 

And  in  the  second  place,  this  denominationalism 
alienates  from  the  churches  those  who  could  do 
everything  in  the  way  of  making  them  to  be 
socially  efficient.  Says  Prof.  Francis  G.  Pea- 
body,  in  his  ''Approach  to  the  Social  Question": 
"Organised  charity  has  found  the  divisions  of 
Christian  creeds  so  obstructive  to  united  effort 
that  it  has  in  large  degree  secularised  itself,  and 
even  prohibits  its  agents  from  religious  propagand- 
ism."  Social  workers  as  a  class  do  not  attend 
church  services,  and  do  not  identify  themselves 
with  church  organisations.  And  in  all  systematic 
social  work,  from  the  organised  charity  to  the 
settlement  house,  religion  is  totally  excluded,  as  it 
is  from  the  public  school,  because  of  denomina- 
tional jealousies  and  fears.  Thus  are  the  churches, 
by  their  own  folly,  robbed  of  the  co-operation  of 
those  who  could  best  guide  them  to  adequate 
social  service,  and  the  influence  of  religion  ar- 
bitrarily banished  from  that  field  where  it  could 
do  its  best  and  noblest  work. 

It  is  time  that  the  absurdities  of  denomination- 
alism came  to  an  end.  It  is  time  that  Presbyterian 
churches  and  Methodist  churches  and  Unitarian 
churches  disappeared,  and  in  their  places  there 


Obstacles  to  Socialised  Church    209 

came  one  universal  church  of  God,  dedicated 
exclusively  not  to  the  support  of  a  hierarchy  or 
the  defence  of  a  creed,  but  to  the  worship  of  God 
and  the  service  of  man.  I  venture  to  assert  that 
the  socialisation  of  the  churches  will  never  be 
reaUsed  until  all  denominational  barriers  have 
been  destroyed  and  all  denominational  titles  wiped 
away. 

(C)  OTHER-WORLDLINESS 

Another  reason  for  the  inevitable  postponement 
of  the  hope  of  the  socialised  church  is  the  so-called 
"  other- world "  conception  of  religion  which  has 
led  the  Christian  church  astray,  in  all  of  its  mani- 
fold branches,  for  centuries.  To-day,  as  for  so 
many  years  in  the  past,  the  church  is  laying  all 
the  emphasis  of  its  teaching  upon  the  life  beyond 
the  grave,  and  is  thus  neglecting  the  life  upon  this 
side  of  the  grave.  The  church  presents  itself  to 
men  as  a  means  of  salvation  from  the  temptations 
and  sins  of  this  world,  and  therefore  of  safe  en- 
trance into  the  promised  joys  of  the  future 
world.  The  church  is  busy  urging  men  to  turn 
their  thoughts  away  from  the  problems  of  this 
purely  transient  Hfe  and  to  give  themselves  to 
preparation  for  that  eternal  life  which  is  be- 
yond the  grave.  This  being  the  traditional  at- 
titude of  the  church  toward  this  present  world, 
it  is  easy  to  understand  why  it  does  not  greatly 
concern  itself    with    the    regeneration  of  exist- 


210  Function  of  the  Church 

ing  society.  Why. should  it  so  waste  its  time, 
and  squander  its  energies?  Other  organisations 
may  concern  themselves  with  cleaning  the  streets 
of  our  cities — the  church  can  think  only  of  the 
golden  streets  of  the  New  Jerusalem!  Other 
organisations  may  be  interested  in  providing  short 
hours  and  adequate  wages  and  decent  conditions 
of  labour  for  the  men  and  women  who  toil  in  our 
factories  and  shops — but  the  church  must  think 
only  of  the  souls  of  these  men  and  women  in  the 
next  world,  regardless  of  what  happens  to  their 
bodies  in  this  world!  Other  societies  may  devote 
themselves  to  the  emancipation  of  little  boys  and 
little  girls  from  exhausting  labour  in  coal  mines 
and  glass-works  and  cotton  factories, — but  the 
church  can  be  interested  only  in  bringing  these 
children  to  Christ!  Thinking  of  nothing  but  this 
other  world  and  the  problems  which  they  imagine 
this  other  world  to  present,  the  priests  of  the 
church  have  forgotten  this  world  and  the  problems 
which  they  know  that  it  presents.  And  not  only 
has  this  absorption  in  the  prospects  of  another 
world  with  its  resulting  neglect  of  this  present 
world,  alienated  the  church  from  society,  but  it 
has  had  the  corresponding  effect  of  alienating 
society  from  the  church.  Says  Prof.  Jacks,  in  a 
remarkable  article  in  the  "Hibbert  Journal," 
entitled  "The  Church  and   the  World": 

By  pressing    this    distinction,   the    church    forces 
the  world  into  a  position  where  effective  reprisals  are 


Obstacles  to  Socialised  Church    211 

not  only  possible  but  certain.  So  far  from  maintain- 
ing her  moral  supremacy,  the  church  by  this  theory 
invited  a  contest  in  which  her  whole  position  is  seri- 
ously imperilled.  ...  If  it  chooses  to  stand  apart, 
society  will  leave  it  in  its  sublime  isolation  and  go  on 
its  own  business  in  its  own  way.  .  .  .  The  alienation 
from  church  life  of  so  much  that  is  good  in  modern 
ctdture,  and  so  much  that  is  earnest  in  every  class, 
is  the  natural  sequel  to  the  traditional  attitude  of 
the  church  to  the  world.  The  church  in  her  theory 
has  stood  aloof  from  the  world.  And  now  the  world 
takes  deadly  revenge  by  maintaining  the  position 
assigned  her,  and  standing  aloof  from  the  church. 

If  the  churches  are  ever  to  be  socialised,  there  must 
be  a  complete  abandonment  of  this  "  other- world  " 
conception  of  religion.  They  must  realise  that, 
whether  there  is  a  future  world  or  not,  their  busi- 
ness for  the  present  is  with  this  world ;  and  that 
dreams  of  what  may  be  yonder  must  yield  to 
recognition  of  what  actually  is  here. 

(d)     dogma 

In  the  third  place,  and  somewhat  analogous  to 
the  above,  there  is  what  Prof.  Rauschenbusch  well 
calls  "the  deflecting  interest  of  dogma."  In  the 
early  church,  practical  interests  rather  than  theo- 
retical were  of  supreme  concern.  Since  the  second 
century,  however,  and  especially  since  the  great 
doctrinal  controversies  of  the  fourth,  dogma  has 
been    regarded    everywhere   as    constituting   the 


212  Function  of  the  Church 

essence  of  Christianity.  Right  belief  has  been 
described  as  the  sole  condition  of  salvation  in  the 
"other  worid";  and  the  church,  being  exclusively 
concerned  with  the  task  of  getting  people  into 
this  "other  world,"  has  felt  that  it  must  do 
nothing  but  teach  this  right  belief.  Hence  the 
doctrinal  disputes,  the  creeds,  the  councils,  the 
persecutions — all  to  the  exclusion  of  any  remotest 
interest  in  the  conditions  of  society.  If  a  man 
could  be  persuaded  to  believe,  what  mattered  it 
under  what  conditions  of  degradation  and  misery 
he  lived  in  this  temporary  earthly  abode?  If  a 
man  held  the  "catholic  faith,"  what  mattered  it 
if  he  were  destroyed  by  poverty,  devoured  by 
disease,  and  oppressed  by  injustice?  Beside 
the  great  problem  of  faith, — "which  faith  ex- 
cept every  one  do  keep  whole  and  imdefiled, 
without  doubt  he  shall  perish  everlastingly," 
to  quote  the  Athanasian  creed, — what  mat- 
tered such  little  problems  as  slavery,  the 
degradation  of  woman,  physical  disease,  poverty, 
political  tyranny,  and  industrial  oppression? 

This  dogmatic  interest  was  bad  enough  in  the 
ages  of  Catholic  domination ;  but  a  bad  matter  was 
only  made  worse  by  the  Protestant  Reformation. 
Under  the  fertilising  influence  of  the  doctrine  of 
the  right  of  private  judgment,  a  hundred  antago- 
nistic sects,  setting  forth  a  hundred  diverse 
statements  of  theological  belief,  each  one  of  which 
was  described  by  its  adherents  as  the  sine  qua  non 
of  salvation,  sprang  rapidly  into  being;  and  the 


Obstacles  to  Socialised  Church    213 

history  of  Protestantism  became  primarily  the 
history  of  theological  controversy.  It  was  creed 
against  creed,  theologian  against  theologian,  school 
against  school,  until  theology  and  religion  became 
practically  synonymous  terms.  With  such  an 
idea  of  the  duty  of  the  church,  and  of  the  nature 
of  the  religious  life,  the  social  gospel  is  of  course 
utterly  incompatible.  Well  does  Prof.  Rauschen- 
busch  declare:  "The  polemic  bitterness  and  intol- 
erance engendered  by  the  dogmatism  of  the 
church  have  been  anti-social  forces  of  the  first 
importance.  .  .  The  personality  of  Jesus,  which  is 
the  unceasing  source  of  revolutionary  moral 
power  in  Christianity,  has  been  almost  complete- 
ly obscured  by  the  dogmatic  Christ  of  the 
Church. " 

(e)  sacred  vs.  secular 

As  a  fourth  reason  for  the  indefinite  postpone, 
ment  of  the  hope  of  a  completely  socialised  church, 
must  be  named  that  astonishing  delusion  which 
has  persuaded  the  church  in  all  ages  to  assert  that 
religion  properly  speaking  has  nothing  to  do  with 
political,  industrial,  or  social  questions  of  any  kind. 
This  idea  has  its  roots  in  the  fallacious  distinction 
which  has  always  been  made  by  the  theological 
mind  between  sacred  and  secular,  and  which  has 
consigned  to  the  care  of  the  church  the  one,  and 
absolutely  removed  from  its  control — or  even 
interest — the  other.    The  church,  it  is  argued,  has 


214  Function  of  the  Church 

to  do  with  spiritual  matters  and  not  with  worldly 
matters.  It  has  its  sacred  book — all  others  are  pro- 
fane !  It  has  its  holy  day — all  others  are  common ! 
It  has  its  one  definite  field  of  sacred  work — all 
others  are  secular!  Assiduously  preserving  the 
Sabbath  from  desecration  by  open  libraries  or  mu- 
seums or  theatres,  the  church  is  indifferent  to  the 
profanation  of  the  other  six  days  in  the  week  by 
criminal  political  transactions,  scandalous  business 
deals,  and  inhuman  conditions  of  labour.  Tireless 
in  lifting  up  its  voice  in  denunciation  of  failure  to 
attend  divine  services  or  indifference  to  the  creeds 
and  sacraments,  it  is  silent  about  underpaid  and 
overworked  women,  the  working  of  children  to 
death  in  factories  and  mines,  the  monopoly  of 
the  necessities  of  life,  the  abomination  of  a  protec- 
tive tariff,  the  social  iniquity  of  the  private  owner- 
ship of  public  resources  and  utilities.  The  church, 
in  spite  of  highly  gratifying  evidences  of  a  real 
awakening  in  many  directions,  is  still  too  much 
to-day  what  Theodore  Parker  found  the  church 
of  his  day  to  be — apart  from  the  real  experiences 
of  men,  and  absorbed  in  the  artificial  problems  of 
its  own  narrowly  prescribed  ecclesiastical  life. 

Look  [he  said]  at  the  churches  of  this  city ;  do  they 
lead  the  Christian  movements  of  the  city — the  peace 
movement,  the  temperance  movement,  the  movement 
for  the  freedom  of  man,  for  education — the  movement 
to  make  society  more  just,  more  wise,  more  good — 
the  great  religious  movements  of  the  times?       Not  at 


Obstacles  to  Socialised  Church    215 

all !  .  .  .  What  clergymen  tell  of  the  sins  of  Boston — 
of  intemperance,  of  licentiousness?  who  of  the  ignor- 
ance of  the  people?  who  tells  of  the  causes  of  poverty 
and  thousand-handed  crimes?  who  aims  to  apply 
Christianity  to  business,  legislation,  to  all  the  nation's 
life?  who  of  them  lays  bare  our  public  sins  as  Christ 
of  old  ? 

To-day  we  have  come  to  the  point  of  seeing 
that  religion,  properly  speaking,  enters  into  every 
relation  of  human  life.  We  understand  that  any- 
thing which  affects  the  life,  liberty,  and  happiness 
of  the  individual  constitutes  a  religious  problem. 
We  know  that  any  social  condition  which  ruins 
a  human  body,  wrecks  a  human  mind,  or  corrupts 
a  human  soul,  calls  for  the  very  vital  interest  of 
the  church  of  God.  But  priest  and  layman  will 
not  yet  have  it  so,  in  all  too  many  churches!  The 
typical  church  and  the  typical  minister  are  still 
as  much  scandalised  at  the  attempts  of  the  church 
to  deal  with  the  problems  of  public  life  at  first 
hand  as  Lord  Melbourne  was  scandalised  a  cen- 
tury ago,  when  he  chanced  to  hear  a  minister  speak 
strong  words  of  condemnation  about  some  of  the 
prevalent  sins  in  the  private  lives  of  the  men  of 
that  day,  and  is  reported  to  have  said :  "Well,  it  has 
certainly  come  to  a  pretty  pass,  when  the  church 
presumes  to  interfere  with  the  private  life  of  the 
individual!"  We  have  really  come  to  the  point 
to-day  when  we  all  agree  that  the  church  is  very 
nearly  concerned  with  every  simplest  virtue   or 


2i6  Function  of  the  Church 

vice  of  private  life — that  it  has  a  right  to  rebuke 
the  sins  of  which  men  may  be  guilty  in  their  pri- 
vate relations;  and  it  is  now  high  time  that  we 
came  to  agree  also  that  what  is  true  of  private  life 
is  equally  true  of  public  life.  For  human  life, 
properly  speaking,  cannot  be  divided  into  sacred 
and  secular.  A  man's  character  cannot  be  sepa- 
rated into  water-tight  compartments,  the  one  la- 
belled private  and  the  other  public ;  his  character, 
in  the  very  nature  of  things,  must  be  all  of  a  single 
piece.  In  the  highest  sense  of  the  word,  all  things 
are  sacred;  and  every  human  relation,  whether 
public  or  private  in  its  outward  seeming,  a 
religious  problem.  Theodore  Parker  was  right, 
when  he  asserted  more  than  half  a  century  ago 
— "I  am  a  minister  of  religion,  therefore  I  have 
not  only  preached  on  the  private  individual 
virtues,  but  likewise  on  the  public  social  vir- 
tues, that  are  indispensable  to  the  general 
welfare.  And  this  work  has  brought  me  into 
direct  relations  with  the  chief  social  evils  of  our 
day."  And  Woodrow  Wilson  is  right  in  this 
age,  when  he  similarly  declares — "The  church 
in  its  teaching  must  contribute  to  the  solu- 
tion of  our  bewildered  social  conditions.  It  is 
the  duty  of  the  church  to  supply  what  society 
is  most  eagerly  looking  for — standards  of  revo- 
lution!" We  shall  have  a  socialised  church 
just  as  soon  as  the  present  religious  organisa- 
tions realise  this  great  truth — and  not  one 
moment  sooner! 


Obstacles  to  Socialised  Church    217 

(f)  class  consciousness 

More  serious  than  anything  that  we  have  yet 
considered  as  an  obstacle  in  the  way  of  the  social- 
ised church  is  the  lamentable  fact  that  the  church 
to-day,  in  the  Protestant  worid,  is  an  institution 
dominated  very  largely  by  that  section  of  society 
which  is  responsible  for  the  social  injustice  of  the 
present  age.  The  men  who  are  the  creators  of  the 
conditions  which  constitute  our  modem  social 
problems,  or  at  least  the  beneficiaries  of  these  con- 
ditions, are  often  the  men  who  sit  in  the  pews  of 
the  churches  and  pay  the  salaries  of  the  ministers. 
Looking  upon  his  congregation,  the  typical  Pro- 
testant clergyman  surveys  not  a  cross-section  of 
society,  but  only  one  little  segment  thereof — and 
that  segment  more  often  than  not  the  very  one 
which  is  identified  with  those  "new  varieties  of 
sin,"  to  quote  Prof.  Ross's  famous  phrase,  which 
are  to  be  distinguished  from  the  old  varieties  of 
sin  by  the  fact  that  they  are  public  and  not  private 
in  their  nature.  The  minister  to-day  finds  no 
difficulty  in  swinging  his  church  into  the  fight 
against  the  liquor  traffic,  for  the  reason  that  the 
saloon  keeper  and  the  beer  brewer  do  not  usually 
go  to  chiu"ch ;  but  it  is  a  different  problem  when  he 
attempts  to  tell  what  he  thinks  about  the  employer 
of  child  labour,  and  sees  that  employer  sitting 
right  before  him  and  listening  to  his  words.  Any 
minister  can  safely  criticise  the  trades  unions  and 
denounce  their  violence,  since  the  labouring  man 


2i8  Function  of  the  Church 

is  not  very  often  a  contributing  member  of  the 
church ;  but  he  finds  himself  confronted  by  a  very 
different  proposition  when  he  desires  to  state  his 
honest  opinion  of  the  Manufacturers'  Association, 
which  has  devoted  itself  to  the  noble  task  of  redu- 
cing the  labouring  men  of  America  to  serfdom,  and 
finds  that  members  of  that  Association  are  perhaps 
the  heaviest  contributors  to  his  society.  Say  what 
we  will,  the  church  to-day,  in  all  too  many  cases, 
is  a  class  institution ;  and  the  men  and  women  who 
are  responsible  for  the  industrial  evils  which  are 
besetting  our  country  at  this  time,  and  are  profit- 
ing by  these  evils,  are  more  often  than  not  the 
very  ones  who  compose  that  class  which  is  inside 
and  not  outside  the  organisation.  Theodore 
Parker,  who  saw  these  issues  more  clearly  than 
any  man  who  ever  stood  in  an  American  pulpit, 
saw  this  fact  with  absolute  distinctness.  "This 
class,"  he  said,  in  his  great  sermon  on  the  "Mer- 
cantile Class," 

controls  the  churches;  hence,  as  a  general  rule,  the 
clergy  are  on  the  side  of  power.  They  are  uncon- 
sciously bought  up — their  speech  paid  for,  or  their 
silence.  As  a  class  did  they  ever  denounce  a  public 
sin  or  a  popular  evil?  ...  I  know  that  there  are 
exceptions,  and  I  will  go  far  to  do  them  honour,  but 
I  am  speaking  of  the  mass  of  the  clergy.  Christ  said 
the  priests  of  his  time  had  made  a  den  of  thieves  out 
of  the  house  of  God.  Now  they  conform  to  the  pub- 
lic sins  and  apologise  for  popular  crime.  The  clergy 
answer  the  end  they  were  bred  for,  paid  for. 


Obstacles  to  Socialised  Church    219 

They  have  "a  gospel  for  a  class,  not  Christ's  gos- 
pel for  human  kind.  It  is  sad  to  say  these  things ! 
Would  God  they  were  not  true!  Look  around  you, 
and,  if  you  can,  come  tell  me  they  are  false."  Nor 
have  the  churches  changed  as  much  as  they  should 
have  changed  in  the  sixty  years  or  more  since  Parker 
spoke  these  terrible  words!  Look  around  to-day, 
and  see  if  they  are  not  still  all  too  true !  Said  Mr. 
Lincoln  Steffens,  in  a  recent  address  before  the 
Universalist  ministers  of  Boston,  ''You  do  not 
have  to  look  for  the  sinners  of  our  day,  for  they 
are  in  your  pews  every  Sunday."  Mr.  Ray  Stan- 
nard  Baker,  in  that  astonishing  book  of  his  entitled 
''The  Spiritual  Unrest,"  which  is  a  marvellous 
revelation  of  the  church  as  a  class  institution,  bears 
witness  to  the  same  facts.  He  tells  us  in  specific 
detail  that  what  Parker  called  the  Mercantile 
Class  in  his  day  still  dominates  the  Protestant 
churches;  and  therefore,  he  says,  "They  have  no 
vision  of  social  justice;  they  have  no  message  for 
the  common  people."  Said  Dr.  Woodrow  Wilson: 
' '  The  besetting  temptation  of  the  church  is  always 
not  to  be  democratic  in  its  organisation,  its  sym- 
pathies, and  its  judgments.  It  ought  to  keep  to 
that  standard  in  which  there  is  no  difference 
between  man  and  man!  But  we  do  not  arrange 
our  pews  or  our  worship  upon  this  basis.  There- 
fore we  lose  the  masses  of  the  people."  And  again 
he  said,  in  an  utterance  before  the  Princeton 
Alumni  of  Pittsburgh:  "The  Protestant  churches 
are  serving  the  classes  and  not  the  masses  of  the 


220  Function  of  the  Church 

people."  And  what  minister  has  not  blushed  with 
shame  at  the  sickening  revelations  given  by  Judge 
Ben  Lindsey,  in  his  recent  book,  "The  Beast,"  as 
to  the  attitude  of  the  churches  of  Colorado  toward 
the  social  problems  of  that  great  state?  No  more 
holy  battle  for  social  justice  was  ever  fought  than 
that  fought  by  Judge  Lindsey  against  the  "Beast" 
in  the  Colorado  "Jungle";  and  he  bears  testimony 
that  the  churches  of  God  lent  him  practically  no 
aid — in  spite  of  certain  splendid  exceptions — 
because  these  churches  were  bound  hand  and  foot 
to  the  business  and  political  interests  of  the  special 
social  class  which  they  represented  and  served. 
If  anybody  wants  to  know  the  full  meaning  of 
what  is  being  said  here  about  the  modem  church 
as  a  class  institution,  let  him  read  this  wonderful 
story  of  American  civic  life.  Instance  after  in- 
stance is  there  given  of  churches  and  ministers 
lining  up  on  the  side  of  corrupt  politics  and  inhu- 
man business,  and  joining  the  worst  forces  of  the 
community  to  destroy  the  "children's  judge." — 

The  ministers  [says  Lindsey]  are  allowed  to  do  what 
they  can — and  they  do  much — to  palliate  the  hard- 
ships of  poverty  and  rescue  the  victims  of  economic 
wrongs;  but  as  soon  as  they  attempt  to  attack  the 
causes  of  some  of  the  greatest  hardships  of  poverty 
and  attempt  to  alleviate  the  injustices  of  corporate 
greed,  our  masters  speak.  As  long  as  the  ministers 
are  content  to  dip  the  water  out  of  the  tub  into  which 
the  faucet  is  still  running,  they  are  encouraged.  But 
as  soon  as  they  attempt  to  turn  off  the  faucet — to 


Obstacles  to  Socialised  Church    221 

cure  the  cause  instead  of  relieving  the  result — the 
strong  hand  of  the  system  is  laid  upon  them.  How- 
can  the  churches  have  any  vision  of  social  justice  and 
any  message  for  the  common  people  when  the  rulers 
of  their  congregations  exist  upon  active  social  injus- 
tice to  the  common  people?  We  must  be  free  of  the 
Beast  in  our  congregations  before  our  ministers  can 
be  free !  When  the  slaveholder  sat  in  the  pew,  there 
was  no  abolitionist  in  the  pulpit.  Where  the  Beast  is 
deacon,  the  minister  is  dumb! 

When  our  churches  are  truly  democratic  and 
not  aristocratic — when  they  represent  society  and 
not  the  dominating  business  interests  of  one  par- 
ticular class  of  society — when  they  are  composed  of 
people  and  not  of  "our  best  citizens" — when  they 
emulate  Jesus  in  having  a  gospel  for  human  kind 
and  not  for  one  social  class — when  they  have 
driven  the  Beast  out  of  the  sanctuary  as  Christ 
drove  the  money-changers  out  of  the  Temple — 
then  and  not  before  shall  we  have  our  socialised 
church ! 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  NEW  CHURCH 

THESE  are  some  of  the  reasons  why  the  church, 
of  which  we  have  been  speaking,  will  prob- 
ably remain  for  many  years  a  dream  rather  than 
a  reality.  And  yet,  if  anything  is  certain  in  this 
world,  it  is  certain  that  this  new  church  will  some 
day  come.  The  new  theology  which,  as  we  have 
seen,  is  everywhere  making  effective  inroads  upon 
the  old  orthodoxy,  is  rapidly  disintegrating  those 
traditions  of  " other- worldliness "  and  "sacred  vs, 
secular,"  which  are  to-day  diverting  the  attention 
of  the  church  from  the  real  business  of  religion. 
The  accumulating  common- sense  of  humanity,  to 
say  nothing  of  the  inevitable  tendencies  of  our 
age  away  from  competition  and  toward  co-opera- 
tion, is  revealing  the  folly  of  sectarian  strife  and 
rivalry,  and  making  the  question  of  church  unity 
one  of  the  livest  issues  of  the  hour.  The  permanent 
capture  of  the  Christian  church,  with  all  of  its 
unforgettable  traditions  of  human  brotherhood 
and  equality,  by  any  one  social  class,  is  simply 
inconceivable,  and  therefore  the  return  of  the  alien- 
ated classes  a  certainty  in  the  not  distant  future. 
And,  most  important  of  all,  of  course,  is  the  utter 

222 


The  New  Church  223 

passing  of  the  philosophy  of  individualism  in  fav- 
our of  the  philosophy  of  social  change,  which  makes 
the  church's  practical  doctrine  of  salvation  as 
obsolete  and  effete  as  the  Ptolemaic  theory  of  the 
universe.  The  transformation,  for  which  we  are 
looking,  is  bound  to  come ;  or,  if  not — if  the  forces 
of  reaction,  ecclesiastical,  theological,  social,  con- 
trary to  all  expectation  and  precedent,  remain 
permanently  triumphant — the  church  itself  will 
disappear,  and  a  new  church,  like  unto  that  which 
we  have  described,  will  straightway  rise  up  to  take 
its  place.  There  is  no  reason  after  all,  in  the  nature 
of  things,  why  a  new  religion,  with  a  new  church 
as  its  organised  expression,  should  not  appear,  to 
embody  the  thought  and  realise  the  dream  of 
advancing  humanity.  A  stagnant  Judaism  was 
followed  by  Christianity — and,  within  Christian- 
ity itself,  a  reactionary  Catholicism  made  inevi- 
table the  advent  of  Protestantism.  And  why 
should  not  history  repeat  itself,  if  necessary?  Why 
is  a  new  Reformation  impossible?  Why  is  a  third 
great  branch  of  Christianity  improbable?  The 
religion  of  socialisation  is  to-day  the  realest  thing 
in  all  the  world;  and  if  this  reHgion  cannot  do  its 
work  within  the  existing  church,  we  may  be  sure 
that  it  will  do  this  work  outside!  For  the  work 
must  and  shall  be  done!  And  it  is  this  work,  and 
not  at  all  the  name  by  which  it  is  known,  which 
is  the  important  thing.  Well  does  Mr.  Henry  D, 
Lloyd,  in  his  "Man,  The  Social  Creator,"  pro- 
claim the  coming  of  this  new  religion  which,  as 


224  Function  of  the  Church 

the  agent  of  social  change,  is  something  more  and 
better  than  the  traditional  Christianity  of  the 
past.  "In  the  sense,"  he  says,  "in  which  Christ- 
ianity, though  only  a  variation  in  an  unceasing 
evolution,  was  a  new  religion,  may  that  also  be 
said  to  be  a  new  religion  on  which  man  is  now 
brooding.  The  new  era  is  ushering  itself  in  by  a 
new  religion,  and  that  religion  is  not  merely  Christ- 
ianity but  an  expansion  of  it."  And  Mr.  Lloyd 
describes  what  this  new  religion  will  do  and  mean 
in  terms  of  its  outward  organised  expression — 
the  church.    The  new  church,  he  says,  will  be  a 

church  of  the  deed  as  well  as  of  the  creed — a  church  that 
wiU  not  only  preach  Christ  but  do  Christ — a  church 
which  will  recognise  no  vested  right  of  property  in 
man  except  the  right  to  love  and  be  loved — a  church 
which  will  declare  that  the  difference  in  the  death-rate 
between  the  classes  and  the  masses  is  evidence  of 
murder  done  for  money — a  church  which  will  look 
upon  idleness  by  the  side  of  industry,  wealth  by  the 
side  of  poverty,  luxury  by  the  side  of  want,  health 
by  the  side  of  disease,  as  impious  and  profane  in  the 
highest  degree,  the  real  sins  against  the  Holy  Ghost — 
a  church  which  will  stop  the  manufacture  of  poor- 
houses  because  it  will  stop  the  manufacture  of  pov- 
erty— a  church  which  will  not  let  any  man  offer  charity 
to  those  to  whom  he  refuses  justice — a  church  which 
will  offer  not  even  to  the  lowliest  member  of  the  com- 
munion of  mankind  crumbs  from  the  table,  but  a  seat 
at  the  table  and  a  full  meal  three  times  a  day  every 
day — a,  church  which  will  persecute  the  heretics  who 


The  New  Church  .    225 

give  the  highest  bidder  the  best  pews  in  the  churches 
and  the  best  chance  in  the  courts — a  church  which 
will  teach  that  the  Ufe  eternal  is  the  Hfe  we  are  living 
now — a  church  which  will  not  let  the  poor  give  up  all 
of  this  world  on  the  unsecured  promise  of  the  rich  to 
divide  the  next  world — a  church  which  will  judge 
civilisation  not  by  the  six-million-dollar  cathedral  on 
Murray  Hill  but  by  the  children  in  the  back-alleys — 
a  church  which  says  that  those  who  are  to  be  brothers 
hereafter  must  be  brothers  here — a  church  which 
recognises  nothing  as  love  which  does  not  bear  justice 
as  its  fruit — a  church  which  declares  the  sacred  right 
to  work  to  mean  that  he  who  works  a  full  day  shall 
live  a  full  day,  and  that  employment  is  a  right  not  a 
charity — a  church  which  will  make  every  social  wrong 
a  moral  wrong,  and  every  moral  wrong  a  legal  wrong — ■ 
a  church  which  will  abolish  the  merchant  prince  and 
the  factory  corporation  sooner  than  let  them  abolish 
the  childhood  of  children — a  church  which  will  abolish 
charity  and  philanthropy,  for  these  cannot  be  between 
brothers,  and  need  not  be  where  justice  is — a  church 
which  will  take  the  weak  and  despised  out  of  the 
earthly  Inferno  of  dirt  and  want  and  ignorance,  to 
which  they  have  been  condemned  by  the  oppressor — 
a  church  which  will  worship  God  through  all  of  his 
sons  made  in  his  image,  through  a  mediator.  Mankind, 
which  having  suffered  all  and  sinned  all,  can  sympa- 
thise with  all,  and  will  carry  all  the  weak  and  weary 
ones  safe  in  its  bosom — a  church  which  will  realise  the 
vision  of  Carlyle  of  a  Human  Catholic  Church. 

Here,  and  nothing  less,  is  the  new  church,  cap« 
tured  and  directed  by  the  new  social  ideal !    It  will 
15 


226  Function  of  the  Church 

seek  first  to  act  and  not  to  believe — to  work  and 
not  to  worship — to  abolish  social  injustice  and 
oppression,  and  not  individual  shortcoming.  And 
lo!  it  will  discover  that,  in  acting,  it  is  believing — 
in  doing  the  will,  it  is  knowing  the  doctrine;  that 
in  working,  it  is  worshipping ;  and  that  in  redeem- 
ing society,  it  is  most  immediately  and  most  ef- 
ficiently redeeming  the  individual. 


CHAPTER  IX 
OBJECTIONS 

TO  this  social  gospel  of  the  new  religion — that 
sin,  like  disease  and  poverty,  must  be  over- 
come fundamentally  through  the  transformation 
of  the  external  conditions  of  the  social  environ- 
ment— there  are  certain  objections  which,  to  many 
minds,  are  unanswerable  and  therefore  conclusive. 
These  objections  are  endowed  with  all  the  sanctity 
of  long  tradition  and  supported  by  all  the  authority 
of  centuries  of  unquestioned  acceptance,  and  there- 
fore exert  an  altogether  disproportionate  influence 
in  the  world  of  human  thought.  One  never  enters 
upon  the  discussion  of  the  social  question  in  all  of 
its  many  phases  to-day  without  encountering  these 
objections  at  the  very  start;  and  always  are  they 
introduced  with  all  that  air  of  finality  which 
accompanies  every  reference  to  Newton's  law  of 
gravitation  or  Euclid's  axioms  of  geometry.  And 
yet,  Uke  many  another  hoary  and  venerable  con- 
ception, these  objections  are  at  bottom  nothing 
but  superstitions;  and,  like  most  superstitions, 
they  still  survive  in  the  average  mind  only  because 
the  average  mind,  by  a  wholly  unconscious  pro- 
cess, has  taken  them  for  granted  and  thus  has 

227_ 


228  Function  of  the  Church 

never  gone  to  the  trouble  of  thinking  them  through. 
It  needs  only  a  moment's  serious  thought,  however, 
in  the  light  of  past  experience  and  present  know- 
ledge, to  expose  the  fallacies  of  these  classic  doc- 
trines, and  thus  remove  them  once  for  all  as  real 
objections  to  our  program  of  social  change 

(a)  human  nature  cannot  be  changed  by  law 

The  objections  to  which  I  refer  are  two  in 
number.  In  the  first  place,  there  is  the  familiar 
dogma,  which,  as  expressed  in  the  popular  ver- 
nacular, reads — You  cannot  change  human  nature 
by  law!  You  cannot  transform  character  by  fiat! 
You  can  introduce  any  arbitrary  social  system  you 
please — you  may  bring  in  the  Kingdom  of  God 
by  legislation  until  the  crack  o'  doom — but  human 
nature  is  still  human  nature,  and  therefore  your 
elaborate  schemes  of  social  reconstruction  must  go 
for  nought,  so  far  as  actual  results  are  concerned. 
Men  under  the  system  of  yesterday  are  the  same 
men  under  the  system  of  to-morrow — and  therefore 
the  actual  status  of  individual  character  and  the 
actual  measure  of  social  progress  remain  about  the 
same.  Every  Utopia  ever  established  in  the  his- 
tory of  mankind  has  inevitably  failed  because  of 
this  one  fundamental  truth.  Ideal  conditions 
have  been  established — perfect  justice  has  been 
ordained — special  privilege  has  been  given  to  none 
and  equal  opportunity  to  all — and  still  the  world 
has  remained  the  same  old  world  because  the  all- 


Objections  229 

important  factor  of  human  nature  has  remained 
constant.  The  only  way  to  achieve  permanent 
progress  is  to  deal  with  the  human  heart  direct. 
The  only  way  to  make  over  the  individual  man — 
changing  his  selfishness  into  unselfishness,  his 
greed  into  generosity,  his  love  into  hate — is  by  the 
old  and  well-tested  process  of  mental,  moral,  and 
religious  education.  To  begin  the  other  way 
around,  and  to  attempt  to  change  the  individual 
cell  by  changing  the  structure  of  the  organism, 
is  an  utterly  futile  process.  As  one  of  the  most 
brilliant  exponents  of  philosophical  individualism 
has  put  it — "The  effort  to  reconstruct  the  charac- 
ter of  men  by  a  change  of  environment  is  contra- 
dicted by  the  history  of  the  race.  No  jelly-fish  was 
ever  made  vertebrate  by  putting  on  it  a  set  of 
stays." 

The  fallacy  of  this  objection  to  our  plan  for  the 
reconstruction  of  society  as  the  first  and  essential 
step  toward  the  reconstruction  of  the  individual 
is  so  patent  that  it  is  almost  unbelievable  that 
people  should  go  on  repeating  it  as  though  it  were 
an  a  priori  condition  of  thought.  The  very  refer- 
ence to  the  jelly-fish  and  the  vertebrate  embodies 
its  own  complete  and  perfect  refutation.  It  is  true, 
of  course,  that  "no  jelly-fish  was  ever  made  verte- 
brate by  putting  on  it  a  set  of  stays,"  but  it  is  also 
true  that,  in  the  due  course  of  biological  evolution, 
the  jelly-fish  did  become  a  vertebrate,  and  achieved 
this  distinction,  not  by  any  impulse  of  its  own  inner 
spirit,  and  not  by  any  course  of  training  from  with- 


230  Function  of  the  Church 

out  such  as  enables  an  elephant  to  stand  on  his 
head,  but  only  by  that  unconscious  process  of 
adaptation  to  the  changing  environment  which 
Darwin  and  his  successors,  as  we  have  seen,  have 
taught  us  is  the  sole  condition  of  survival!  And 
what  is  true  here  of  the  jelly-fish  is  equally  true  also 
of  the  human  being.  So  far  from  the  history  of 
the  race  contradicting  "the  effort  to  reconstruct 
the  character  of  men  by  a  change  of  environment," 
does  it  not  affirm  this  very  thing?  "The  most 
superficial  knowledge  of  history,"  says  Mr. 
Edmond  Kelley,  in  his  "Twentieth  Century 
Socialism,"  "will  suffice  to  demonstrate  the 
untruth  of  the  maxim  that  human  nature  cannot 
be  changed  by  law.  Human  nature  has  already 
been  profoimdly  changed  by  law — by  the  insti- 
tution of  marriage,  by  public  education,  by  pro- 
perty." Who  can  tell,  indeed,  what  changes  have 
been  wrought  in  the  character  of  men's  minds  and 
hearts  and  souls  through  the  operation  of  those 
changes  which  have  first  been  wrought  in  insti- 
tutions by  peaceful  legal  enactment  or  by  violent 
revolutionary  convulsion?  Who  can  estimate 
what  it  has  meant  to  human  nature  to  abolish 
chattel  slavery,  to  emancipate  womankind  from 
social  and  industrial  dependence,  to  guarantee 
the  right  of  private  property  and  private  contract, 
to  protect  the  family  and  the  home,  to  displace 
monarchy  with  democracy,  and  ecclesiastical 
authority  with  religious  liberty ;  and  who  can  simi- 
larly estimate  what  it  would  mean  to  human  nature 


Objections  231 

to  destroy  the  liquor  traffic,  to  socialise  capital, 
to  abolish  industrial  slavery,  and  to  establish 
international  peace?  Why  indeed  should  human- 
ity ever  waste  its  time  and  strength,  to  say  nothing 
of  its  blood  and  treasure,  in  trying  to  accomplish 
any  such  reforms  as  these,  if  human  nature  remains 
absolutely  unchanged  in  the  process?  What  dif- 
ference does  it  make  if  we  have  chattel  slavery 
or  not,  if  masters  and  slaves  are  the  same  kind  of 
individuals  under  conditions  of  freedom  as  under 
conditions  of  bondage?  Why  should  we  care 
whether  a  woman  is  a  plaything  in  a  Turkish  harem 
or  an  honoured  wife  and  mother  in  an  Anglo-Saxon 
home,  if  her  soul  is  the  same  in  the  one  place  as  in 
the  other?  Why  should  millions  of  men  have  died 
upon  the  battle-field  and  in  the  dungeon  and  on 
the  gibbet  for  the  cause  of  political  liberty — why 
should  we  have  Puritan  Revolutions  and  French 
Revolutions  and  American  Revolutions, — why 
should  we  regard  Hamptons  and  Pyms,  Mirabeaus 
and  Dantons,  Washingtons  and  Jeffersons,  as 
anything  more  than  fools  and  simpletons — if 
human  character  is  absolutely  unaffected  by  the 
transformation  from  oppression  to  freedom?  Why 
should  Robert  Owen  have  agonised  over  the  con- 
dition of  English  working-men,  and  the  Earl  of 
Shaftesbury  have  laboured  early  and  late  for  the 
passage  of  his  Factory  Acts,  and  Elizabeth  Barrett 
Browning  have  raised  "the  bitter  cry  of  the 
children,"  if  the  great  masses  of  England's  working 
population  were  in  the  same  condition  morally 


232  Function  of  the  Church 

and  spiritually  before  the  reforms  as  after?  Why- 
should  we  be  striving  to-day  for  the  conquest  of 
the  liquor  traffic,  the  abolition  of  Mormon  poly- 
gamy, the  democratising  of  conditions  of  labour, 
the  banishment  of  war,  if  these  things  mean 
nothing  to  the  individual  soul?  Why  have  any 
social  question?  Why  bother  about  external 
reforms  of  any  kind?  Why  not  accept  the  insti- 
tutions of  Mohammedanism  as  well  as  those  of 
Christianity,  the  government  of  Russia  as  well  as 
that  of  America,  the  conditions  of  living  of  the 
tenth  century  as  well  as  those  of  the  twentieth 
century?  These  questions  answer  themselves,  do 
they  not?  We  all  agree  that  the  one  important 
thing  in  human  life  is  the  welfare  and  integrity 
of  the  individual  soul.  And  men  have  laboured  in 
all  ages  to  reconstruct  the  institutions  of  society, 
which  constitute  the  external  environment  of  the 
soul,  because  they  have  known,  whether  they 
have  confessed  it  or  not,  that  there  is  the  closest 
possible  relation  between  the  two.  It  is  true  that 
the  passing  of  a  law  or  the  rebuilding  of  an  insti- 
tution leaves  the  individuals  concerned  absolutely 
unchanged  in  essence.  The  pig  is  still  a  pig,  after 
the  sty  has  been  cleansed;  and  the  man  is  still  a 
man  after  the  tenement  in  which  he  lives  has  been 
remodelled  in  accordance  with  the  new  law.  But 
who  ever  said  that  he  would  be  anything  else  than 
a  man?  Who  ever  prophesied  that  he  would 
become  transformed  into  an  angel  of  heaven?  He 
is  still  a  man,  of  course — but  he  has  now  the  possi- 


Objections  233 

bility  of  being  a  better  man,  a  stronger  man,  a 
happier  man,  a  more  efficient  man;  and  what  is 
this  but  the  very  ''reconstruction  of  character" 
that  we  are  after — the  transformation  of  the  jelly- 
fish into  the  vertebrate?^ 

And  it  is  just  this  consideration  which  gives  us 
the  real  answer  to  this  objection  that  character 
cannot  be  changed  by  the  transformation  of  the 
environment.  Who  wants  to  change  human  na- 
ture, after  all?  Have  we  not  already  seen  that 
human  nature  is  essentially  divine,  and  therefore 
needs  not  a  change  but  a  chance?  The  whole  idea 
that  human  nature  needs  to  be  changed  from  what 
it  now  is  into  something  that  it  is  not  but  ought 
to  be,  is  a  part  of  that  whole  traditional  conception 
of  a  depraved  and  lost  human  nature  which  the 
world  has  long  since  cast  aside.  Human  nature 
is  all  right  as  it  is !  It  is  normally  sound  and  clean 
and  strong — capable  in  its  original  and  unaltered 
state  of  infinite  possibilities  of  development.  The 
trouble  is  not  with  the  soul  but  with  the  environ- 
ment of  the  soul.  The  trouble  is  that  this  soul  is 
"cribbed,  cabined,  and  confined" — degraded  and 
oppressed  and  persecuted — used,  abused,  and 
exploited — denied  that  freedom  of  opportunity 
without  which  physical,  mental,  and  moral  ab- 
normality are  the  inevitable  result.  What  we  need 
therefore  is  not  to  transform  human  nature  but  to 
transplant  it.     When  the  botanist  sees  that  the 

»  See  the  convincing  treatment  of  this  objection  in  Norman 
Angell's  recent  book,  "The  Great  Illusion." 


234  Function  of  the  Church 

rose-bush  in  his  damp,  dark  cellar  is  scraggly  and 
drooping  and  withered,  he  may  think  that  the 
trouble  is  with  the  plant  itself,  and  that  it  is  neces- 
sary to  change  it  in  some  miraculous  way  which  is 
unknown  to  the  ways  of  science.  But  the  real 
botanist  will  understand  clearly  enough  that  the 
trouble  is  not  with  the  plant  but  with  the  cellar; 
and  therefore  he  will  seek  to  revive  it  by  changing 
its  environment.  He  takes  it  out  into  the  open 
air — he  puts  its  roots  deep  down  into  the  warm, 
fresh  soil — he  exposes  it  freely  to  the  sunshine  and 
the  rain.  And,  lo!  before  a  week  has  passed,  the 
bush  has  become  strong  and  tall  and  beautiful! 
The  plant  is  the  same  plant  that  it  has  always 
been.  No  change  has  been  accomplished  what- 
soever in  any  slightest  fibre  of  its  being.  But  it 
has  been  given  a  fair  chance  to  fulfil  all  of  its 
original  latent  possibilities  by  being  placed  in  an 
environment  which  was  a  help  and  not  a  hindrance. 
And  exactly  the  same  thing  is  true  of  human 
nature !  When  we  attempt  to  pass  progressive  legis- 
lation for  the  reform  of  social  conditions,  and  we 
are  met  with  the  challenge  that  we  cannot  change 
human  nature  by  law,  we  need  only  to  reply  that 
the  challenge  is  quite  beside  the  point.  Human 
nature  needs  no  change,  and  nobody  is  trying  to 
change  it.  It  needs  only  a  chance — a  chance  to 
grow  and  thrive  and  blossom — a  chance  to  be  the 
thing  that  God  intended  it  to  be — and  it  is  just 
this  outward  chance,  and  not  at  all  the  supposi- 
titious inward  change,  which  we  are  seeking  in  our 


Objections  235 

legislation.  If  men  are  to  be  men,  they  must  be 
freed  from  slavery  of  every  kind — they  must  be 
rescued  from  conditions  of  life  and  labour  which 
are  intolerable  because  inhuman — they  must  be 
protected  from  conditions  which  make  ill-health, 
ignorance,  poverty,  and  immorality  simply  inevi- 
table— they  must  be  given  an  environment,  in  a 
word,  which  will  strengthen  and  not  break  the 
body,  expand  and  not  repress  the  mind,  uphold  and 
not  ruin  the  soul.  They  must  be  given  the  chance 
that  the  flower  has,  when  it  is  given  rain  and  sun- 
shine and  fresh  air.  And  we  can  do  this  only  by 
changing  laws  and  institutions !  We  cannot  legis- 
late morality,  but  we  can  legislate  conditions  that 
foster  morality.  We  cannot  enact  virtue  by  pass- 
ing laws,  but  we  can  enact  conditions  which  make 
virtue  an  infinitely  easier  and  more  natural  thing 
than  vice.  We  cannot  prevent  men  from  yielding 
to  temptation  by  legislative  action,  but  we  can 
by  legislative  action  remove  all  temptation  from 
them.  We  cannot  by  any  law  or  code  or  sign, 
any  legislative  measure  or  executive  proclamation 
or  judicial  decision,  redeem  a  lost  soul,  but  we  can 
by  one  or  all  of  these  methods  prevent  that  soul 
from  becoming  lost  in  the  beginning.  It  is  true 
that  human  nature  can  be  changed  in  the  sense 
that  it  can  be  degraded,  perverted,  wrecked,  de- 
stroyed by  unfavourable  environment.  And  it  is  to 
prevent  this  calamity,  and  to  keep  human  nature 
just  what  it  is  in  its  normal  and  imspoiled  condi- 
tion, that  we  must  seek  its  protection  and  emanci- 


236  Function  of  the  Church 

pation  through  social  reconstruction.  Men  are 
as  good  as  society  permits  them  to  be.  Men  are 
as  bad  as  society  forces  them  to  be.  Here  is  the 
final  and  perfect  answer  to  this  objection! 

(b)  how  change  society  except  through  the 
influence  of  good  men 

The  second  objection  to  our  gospel  of  social 
change  is  as  familiar  and  venerable  as  the  first. 
I  refer  to  the  doctrine  that  society  cannot  be 
reformed  except  through  the  influence  of  good 
men,  and  these  good  men  can  be  produced  only  by 
the  long-tested  process  of  moral  and  religious  edu- 
cation. It  may  be  true,  as  Dean  Freemantle  puts 
it,  that  "the  world  is  the  subject  of  redemption"; 
but  it  is  also  true  that  this  task  of  redemption  can 
be  accomplished  only  by  individual  men  who  see 
the  necessity  of  social  change  and  are  unselfish 
enough  to  give  "their  lives,  their  fortunes,  and 
their  sacred  honour"  to  its  fulfilment.  How  are 
you  going  to  get  the  work  of  social  reconstruction 
done,  it  is  asked,  if  not  by  individual  men  who 
have  the  social  vision;  and  how  are  you  going  to 
get  these  men  in  the  first  place,  if  they  are  not 
provided  by  the  church  through  the  old  method  of 
salvation  or  character-building?  The  only  possible 
way  to  proceed,  in  other  words,  is  to  redeem  this 
individual  and  then  that  individual  and  then  the 
other  individual,  and  then  look  to  these  redeemed 
individuals  to  remake  the  organisation  of  society. 


Objections  237 

To  begin  the  other  way  around — to  undertake  to 
transform   society   first,    and   then,    through    the 
influence  of  the  changed  environment,  to  expect 
the  transformation  of  the  individual, — is  simply 
to  put  the  cart  before  the  horse.    However  true  it 
may  be  that  the  individual  is  essentially  a  social 
creature  and  that  his  ultimate  salvation  must  be 
found  in  the  redemption  of  the  social  organism,  it 
is  equally  true  that  man  is  unique  among  all  crea- 
tures, as  we  have  seen,  in  his  abihty  to  change  his 
environment  of  his  own  initiative  and  according  to 
his  own  desires,  and  therefore  must  be  regarded  as 
a  social  agent  as  well  as  a  social  victim.    Society 
must  be  changed,  no  doubt ;  and  this  change  will  im- 
questionably  do  much  to  react  upon  the  condition 
and  character  of  the  individual.     But  it  is  this 
same  individual,  all  the  same,  who  must  serve  as 
the  agent  of  the  change  desired;  and  not  one  step 
can  be  taken  in  the  carr>-ing  out  of  the  program  of 
social  reconstruction,  tmtil  that  agent  has  been 
provided. 

Applied  to  the  church,  this  conception  means 
that  any  such  identification  of  rehgion  and  the 
social  question  as  that  for  which  we  have  been 
arguing  all  along  is  irrational  and  dangerous.  The 
church  as  an  institution  should  have  no  connection 
whatsoever  with  any  movements  of  social  reform, 
and  should  not  attempt  of  itself  to  influence  the 
trend  of  social  development.  Its  business  begins 
and  ends  with  the  individual  men  and  women  who 
compose  its  congregations  and  make  up  its  stand- 


238  Function  of  the  Church 

ing  membership.  It  must  take  these  men  and 
women  and  purge  their  souls  of  all  vanity  and  self- 
seeking,  banish  from  their  minds  all  worldly  desires 
and  ambitions,  fill  their  hearts  with  sympathy  and 
compassion  and  abiding  good-will — plant  within 
each  one  of  them  those  ideals  of  truth  and  right- 
eousness and  love,  which  make  up  the  being  of  God 
in  so  far  as  we  understand  that  being,  and  energise 
the  spirit  of  each  into  the  service  of  these  ideals. 
It  must  take  each  individual,  in  a  word,  and 
persuade  him  to  live,  in  association  with  men, 
the  life  of  God.  Then,  having  thus  animated 
these  individuals  with  the  divine  spirit  of  con- 
secration, it  can  send  them  out  into  the  world 
and  safely  trust  them  to  do  as  individuals 
whatever  is  necessary  for  the  redemption  of  the 
world.  It  is  the  business  of  the  church,  in  other 
words,  to  train  good  men.  These  provided,  the 
good  society  will  follow  at  once  as  the  work  of 
their  hands.  The  churches,  that  is,  cannot  them- 
selves act  as  organised  agencies  of  social  reform. 
They  must  be  content  with  awakening  the  social 
conscience  in  the  men  and  women  who  comprise 
their  membership,  and  then  send  them  forth  as 
individuals  to  co-operate  with  similarly  inspired 
individuals  for  the  redemption  of  the  world.  "The 
mission  of  the  church,"  says  Prof.  Rauschenbusch, 
interpreting  this  attitude,  with  which  of  course  he 
most  heartily  disagrees,  "Is  to  im.plant  the  divine 
life  in  the  souls  of  men,  and  from  these  regenerated 
individuals  the  forces  of  righteousness  will  silently 


Objections  239 

radiate,  and  evil  customs  and  institutions  will  melt 
away  without  any  propaganda." 

Now  it  must  be  recognised  at  once  that  this 
objection,  if  sound,  is  absolutely  fatal  to  the  social 
interpretation  of  religion  which  has  been  set  forth 
in  this  book.  In  describing  the  individual  as  the 
ultimate  influence  in  the  development  of  humanity, 
it  brings  us  straight  back  to  the  traditional  indi- 
vidualism which  has  characterised  Christianity 
almost  from  the  very  beginning,  and  thus  contro- 
verts everything  for  which  we  have  been  contend- 
ing. But  it  must  also  be  recognised  at  once  that 
this  objection  can  have  no  standing  whatsoever 
except  upon  the  basis  of  the  old  hypothesis  of  a 
depraved  and  lost  humanity.  To  say  that  society 
can  be  redeemed  only  through  the  agency  of  the 
redeemed  individual  is  to  assume  that  men  are 
naturally  bad,  and  that  they  must  be  individually 
converted  or  educated  before  they  can  be  trusted 
to  serve  the  cause  of  human  betterment  with  unself- 
ish consecration.  It  is  to  assume,  in  other  words, 
that  there  is  no  goodness  in  the  world  for  the  doing 
of  the  work  of  social  reconstruction,  except  what 
can  be  manufactured  by  the  schools  and  churches. 
It  is  here  that  the  familiar  figure  of  the  church  as 
a  "power-house"  is  so  often  used.  According  to 
this  idea,  there  is  no  moral  energy  in  the  world  for 
the  doing  of  any  social  task;  and  therefore  we  set 
up  the  church,  as  the  electric  engineer  sets  up  his 
dynamo,  to  generate  the  energy  which  we  must 
have  for  the  accomplishment  of  our  work. 


240  Function  of  the  Church 

This  idea,  however,  that  humanity  is  essentially 
bad,  and  that  there  is  no  natural  store  of  moral 
energy  in  the  human  heart  which  can  be  applied 
to  the  task  of  social  salvation,  is  a  supposition,  as 
we  have  seen,  which  is  utterly  discredited.  The 
normal  man,  it  should  never  be  forgotten,  is  good 
and  not  bad;  and  ready  therefore  at  any  time,  if 
only  he  be  given  the  opportunity  and  shown  the 
way,  to  serve  the  highest  interests  of  hiimanity. 
There  is  no  need  of  manufacturing  individuals,  if 
I  may  use  the  phrase,  to  serve  as  agents  for  the 
accomplishment  of  the  social  changes  which  we 
desire.  These  individuals, — brave,  strong,  patient, 
long-suffering,  self-sacrificing  by  right  of  birth — 
are  already  here,  and  all  they  need  is  to  be  sum- 
moned and  directed.  The  amoimt  of  moral  energy 
latent  in  the  unspoiled  human  heart  is  beyond  all 
human  calculation.  Else  why  the  world-shaking 
movements  which  have  arisen  spontaneously 
without  the  leadership  of  church  or  state — nay, 
more  often  than  not,  in  open  defiance  of  these  insti- 
tutions— and  swept  away  in  one  mad  surge  of 
revolution  the  mightiest  obstacles  in  the  path  of 
progress?  Why  the  deeds  of  heroism  and  conse- 
cration which  are  the  commonest  events  of  daily 
life?  Why  the  visions  and  dreams  of  myriad 
human  souls,  in  every  age  and  nation,  who  have 
been  confined  within  the  limits  of  no  church,  been 
obedient  to  the  laws  of  no  state,  and  been  guided 
by  the  authority  of  no  leader?  In  the  face  of  such 
facts  as  these,  why  talk  about  the  necessity  of 


Objections  241 

making  over  individual  men  and  women  to  serve  as 
the  agents  of  social  change?  Why  declare  that  it 
is  the  church's  business  to  make  the  individual 
religious,  and  then  trust  that  individual  to  recon- 
struct the  social  fabric?  The  task  of  the  church, 
says  Prof.  Patten,  in  a  striking  passage,  ''is  not 
to  make  men  religious,  but  to  make  men  normal." 
They  are  already  religious  just  as  they  are,  in  their 
natural,  imspoiled  state;  and  if  religion  seems  to 
have  disappeared  from,  or  never  to  have  appeared 
at  all  in,  their  souls,  it  is  only  because  the  oppres- 
sions of  society  have  made  them  abnormal  to  just 
that  extent. 

From  the  standpoint  of  this  interpretation  of 
human  nature,  this  objection  to  our  description 
of  the  church  as  itself  the  agent  of  social  recon- 
struction, wholly  fails.  We  do  not  need  to  redeem 
the  individual  to  serve  as  the  church's  agent — this 
individual  is  already  here  ready  to  be  used!  We 
do  not  need  to  regard  the  church  as  a  "power- 
house" generating  moral  energy — this  energy  is 
already  here,  waiting  to  be  directed  into  the  chan- 
nels of  social  service.  What  we  must  ask  of  the 
church  is  not  that  it  shall  redeem  the  individual, 
but  that  it  shall  take  the  individual  just  as  he  is 
and  organise  him  with  his  fellows  for  efficient 
work — not  that  it  shall  generate  moral  power,  but 
that  it  shall  direct  this  moral  power  already  gene- 
rated. And  it  is  just  this  business  of  using  the 
individual  as  contrasted  with  redeeming  him — of 
directing  moral  energy  as  contrasted  with  generat- 
id 


242  Function  of  the  Church 

ing  it — that  the  church  has  done  in  those  two  or 
three  notable  instances  when  it  has  not  been  led  al- 
together astray  upon  strange  and  unfamiliar  paths, 
but  has  been  really  serviceable  to  humanity.  How 
is  it  possible  for  any  sane  man,  in  the  light  of  certain 
remarkable  episodes  in  Christian  history,  to  con- 
tend that  the  church  has  never  itself  acted  as  an 
organised  agency  of  social  reform?  The  supreme 
task  of  the  church,  as  we  have  seen,  has  always 
been  the  task  of  redeeming  or  educating  the  indi- 
vidual soul,  quite  apart  from  any  social  relations 
or  entanglements ;  and  this  so  well-nigh  exclusively 
that  Prof.  Rauschenbusch  can  seriously  ask  the 
question,  "Why  has  the  church  never  entered  upon 
the  task  of  social  reconstruction?"  But  on  two  or 
three  occasions,  through  some  inevitable  and  per- 
haps imconscious  extension  of  the  work  of  indi- 
vidual salvation  to  that  of  social  salvation,  the 
church  has  aroused  itself,  and  shown  its  possi- 
bilities of  achievement  in  the  field  of  social  action. 
What  was  the  movement  of  monasticism,  for 
example,  but  a  social  movement? — not  an  attempt 
to  redeem  the  world,  to  be  sure,  but  certainly  an 
attempt  to  create  ab  initio  a  new  world  for  the 
rescue  of  humanity.  What  was  the  movement  of 
the  crusades  but  a  great  social  endeavour  to  con- 
quer the  world  for  Christ? — and  when  the  church 
preached  the  crusades  what  was  it  doing  but 
becoming  itself  an  agent  of  social  reconstruction? 
What  is  the  great  movement  of  foreign  missions, 
especially  in  its  more  recent  developments,  but  a 


Objections  243 

direct  movement  for  the  reconstruction  of  foreign 
civilisations  after  the  pattern  of  Christian  society? 
At  bottom,  of  course,  there  was  present  here  the 
ever-present  motive  of  individual  redemption,  but 
the  social  motive  was  not  and  never  could  be 
absent  from  such  imdertakings.  In  such  instances 
as  these,  we  see  the  church  not  only  generating 
spiritual  energy  in  the  individual  heart,  but  actu- 
ally directing  the  line  of  action  of  this  energy.  And 
it  is  this  work  of  directing  which  I  have  in  mind, 
as  I  need  not  now  point  out,  when  I  speak  of  the 
church  as  an  active  organised  agent  of  social 
reform.  What  the  church  has  unconsciously  been 
doing  in  such  tremendous  movements  as  these  of 
monasticism,  the  crusades,  and  foreign  missions, 
it  should  now  do  consciously  and  deliberately  along 
the  lines  of  direct  social  reconstruction.  Let  the 
church  attempt  to  build  up  a  perfect  social  order 
in  the  world,  instead  of  outside  the  world,  as  in  the 
case  of  monasticism!  Let  the  church  preach  a 
great  world-wide  crusade  against  industrial  feud- 
alism, special  privilege,  poverty, — in  a  word,  eco- 
nomic infidelity,  as  it  preached  centuries  ago  a 
dozen  or  more  crusades  against  Mohammedan 
infidelity!  Let  the  church  undertake  to  banish 
child-labour,  sweat-shops,  tuberculosis  tenements, 
the  wage  system,  machine  politics,  the  tariff,  in  our 
own  land,  as  it  undertakes  to  banish  cannibalism, 
polygamy,  human  sacrifice,  infanticide,  subjection 
of  women,  by  foreign  missions  in  lands  across  the 
seas!    Indeed,  not  to  ask  too  much,  let  the  church 


244  Function  of  the  Church 

as  an  active  organisation  grapple  with  every  social 
ill,  as  it  has  already  learned  to  grapple  with  those 
few  social  ills  wherein  the  consequences  to  the 
individual  are  peculiarly  conspicuous.  The 
church,  for  example,  has  never  declined  within 
recent  years  to  enter  the  fight  against  the  liquor 
traffic  on  the  ground  that  work  of  this  kind  must 
be  left  to  the  individual  whom  the  church  has 
instructed  and  inspired.  On  the  contrary,  in  this 
stupendous  combat  against  one  of  the  most  insidi- 
ous of  all  the  social  evils  of  modem  times,  the 
church  has  of  late  been  ''foremost  in  the  fight," 
whatever  its  shortcomings  in  other  directions. 
It  has  always  inspired  its  members  to  wage  this 
warfare  outside  the  church  as  individuals;  but 
it  has  realised  also  that  the  church  must  act  as  a 
church — and  right  nobly  has  it  done  so ! 

The  same  thing  is  true  of  the  gambling  iniquity. 
Here  also  the  church  has  never  been  afraid  to  act 
as  itself  an  agent  of  reform,  and  has  steadfastly 
refused  to  leave  the  fight  to  such  earnest  and  con- 
secrated individuals  as  might  care  to  enter  the 
lists.  The  last  great  battle  against  this  social 
abomination  was  fought  in  New  York  State,  imder 
the  leadership  of  Governor  Charles  E.  Hughes; 
and  the  Governor  himself  bore  public  testimony 
to  the  fact  that  he  could  not  have  won  his  fight  had 
not  the  church  upheld  his  arms.  And  by  this  he 
meant  the  church  in  its  organised  capacity,  and 
not  at  all  the  individual  members  of  the  church. 

This  is  what  is  meant  by  the  social  function  of 


Objections  245 

the  church — that  the  church  shall  enter  into  every 
political,  industrial,  and  social  problem  as  it  entered 
into  these  few,  and  not  fall  back  upon  the  miser- 
able subterfuge  of  relying  upon  the  individual. 
Except  for  such  isolated  instances  as  these  which 
I  have  named,  the  church  as  a  church  has  confined 
its  activities  almost  exclusively  to  works  of  charity 
or  relief,  and  never  extended  them  to  the  more 
fundamental  works  of  justice  or  prevention.  It 
will  give  money  as  an  organisation  to  philanthropic 
agencies  for  the  amelioration  of  the  individual 
consequences  of  poverty,  but  it  will  not  throw 
down  the  gage  of  battle  to  the  industrial  system 
which  makes  poverty  as  inevitable  as  the  apple 
blossoms  in  the  springtime.  It  will  send  little 
children  out  of  the  hot  slums  to  the  fresh-air 
farms,  or  give  them  the  use  of  its  buildings  for 
vacation  schools,  but  it  will  not  assail  the  unjust 
system  of  municipal  taxation  and  private  owner- 
ship of  land  and  transportation  facilities  which 
create  the  slum  conditions  of  congested  popula- 
tions. It  will  give  food  to  the  hungry  and  cloth- 
ing to  the  naked,  but  it  will  not  abolish  the 
monopolies  and  special  privileges,  the  protective 
tariffs  and  capitalistic  industries,  the  unemploy- 
ment, the  industrial  accidents,  the  long  hours  and 
intolerable  conditions  of  labour  which  create  more 
hunger  and  nakedness  in  a  day  than  can  be  sat- 
isfied in  a  year.  The  church  has  no  difficulty  in 
acting  as  an  organised  agency  of  social  reform, 
so  long  as  the  reform  is  superficial  and  therefore 


246  Function  of  the  Church 

means  only  charity.  It  is  only  when  the  reform  is 
fundamental  and  therefore  means  justice,  that  it 
withdraws  and  talks  about  inspiring  its  individual 
members  to  go  out  and  work! 

It  is  noticeable  also  that  such  social  ills  as  are 
really  assailed  by  the  church  in  its  organised 
capacity — the  liquor  traffic,  gambling,  the  social 
evil,  etc. — are  always  those  ills  which  affect  the 
financial  interests  and  the  moral  standing  of  some 
other  class  of  the  population  than  that  represented 
in  the  actual  membership  of  the  church.  The 
church  can  pitch  into  the  brewers  and  the  saloon- 
keepers, as  we  have  already  pointed  out,  since 
these  men  seldom  rent  pews  or  sit  in  them  on  Sun- 
day morning — and  when  they  did  do  so,  more 
than  they  do  now,  the  chiu-ch  was  very  frequently 
a  reluctant  antagonist  of  the  evil!''  The  church 
can  assail  the  race-track  "toots"  and  the  gambling 
fraternity  with  an  easy  conscience,  as  these  gentry 
never  sit  upon  boards  of  trustees  or  help  pay  off 
deficits.  But  when  we  come  to  certain  other  great 
and  much  more  fundamental  reforms,  then  it  is 
straightway  a  different  proposition!  vSuppose  we 
call  upon  the  church  to  take  up  the  fight  for  a  read- 
justment of  municipal  taxation  upon  a  basis  of 
land  values  and  the  unearned  increment!  That  is 
of  course  impossible — for  is  not  Mr.  Many-Acres 
one  of  "our  most  prominent  men,"  and  one  of  the 
most  liberal  contributors  to  the  minister's  salary! 

'  See  the  famous  John  Pierpont  episode  in  the  history  of  Boston 
Unitarianism. 


Objections  247 

Or  suppose  we  summon  the  church  to  put  itself  in 
dead  earnest  behind  the  battle  for  the  abolition  of 
child-labour!  Here  again,  impossible — for  Mr. 
Child- Killer,  who  owns  the  great  glass  factory  in 
New  Jersey,  is  one  of  "our  trustees,"  and  Mrs. 
Stocks,  the  president  of  "our  ladies'  society,"  has 
all  her  money  invested  in  southern  cotton  mills! 
Or  suppose  that  we  declare  to-day  that  the  protec- 
tive tariff  is  a  moral  issue,  and  that  the  church 
should  fight  it  as  "the  abomination  of  desolation." 
What  then  would  happen  to  those  churches  whose 
supporters  are  the  beneficiaries  of  a  customs  tax 
on  the  necessities  of  life?  Mr.  Worldly- Wiseman, 
who  is  the  "Richard  Yea-and-Nay"  of  many 
churches,  is  inclined  to  draw  the  line  rather  tight 
in  these  days;  and  when  there  comes  up  the  ques- 
tion of  any  fundamental  reform,  which  strikes 
straight  to  the  heart  of  a  crying  social  injustice  and 
inevitably  threatens  to  disturb  some  vested  inter- 
ests, lower  some  stock  values  and  diminish  some 
swollen  and  tainted  fortunes,  the  church  as  a 
church  is  "called  off,"  and  we  get  some  pretty 
prattle  about  the  individual  members  of  chiirches 
and  their  duty  to  society ! 

The  fact  of  the  matter  is,  the  more  we  study  the 
history  of  organised  Christianity  and  see  the  atti- 
tude which  the  church  has  consistently  assumed 
toward  the  monstrous  social  iniquities  of  all  eras, 
from  the  feudalism  of  the  Middle  Ages  to  the 
American  chattel  slavery  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury and  the  world-wide  industrial  slavery  of  the 


248  Function  of  the  Church 

twentieth,  the  more  we  are  forced  to  recognise 
the  essential  truth  of  Prof.  Rauschenbusch's  sig- 
nificant statement  that  this  theory,  that  social 
change  must  proceed  from  the  radiation  of  "good- 
ness from  our  regenerate  souls,"  "was  devised  to 
put  the  best  face  on  an  uncomfortable  fact.  It  is 
a  fact  that  there  has  been  a  startling  absence  of 
any  thorough  and  far-going  determination  or  effort 
to  transform  and  Christianise  the  social  life  of 
humanity.  But  that  lack  has  not  been  due  to  the 
wise  self-restraint  of  the  church,  which  knew  a 
better  way."  The  moral  energy  necessary  for  the 
accomplishment  of  these  reforms  has  always  been 
ready  and  waiting  in  the  hearts  of  men  for  the  sum- 
mons and  direction  of  the  church.  But  ordinarily, 
as  we  have  seen,  the  church  has  been  interested  in 
other  things ;  and  whenever  it  has  been  aroused  to 
the  task  of  social  salvation  and  has  attempted  to 
direct  the  latent  energies  of  men  to  this  end,  it  has 
been  careful,  from  motives  far  from  worthy,  to 
direct  these  energies  into  "safe  and  sane"  chan- 
nels. And  itself  ashamed  of  its  betrayal  of  the 
Master,  it  has  devised  this  attractive  but  not 
altogether  plausible  theory  of  the  responsibility 
of  the  individual.  What  is  fitting  work  for  the 
Christian  individual  is  fitting  work  for  Christian 
individuals  organised — which  means  the  church! 
Nor  can  the  church  much  longer  escape  this  inevi- 
table corollary  from  its  own  proposition. 

Both  these  familiar  and  venerable  objections 
to  the  socialisation  of  the  church  must  be  put  aside 


Objections  249 

as  wholly  fallacious.  Both  have  their  origin  in  the 
theory  of  a  depraved  and  fallen  humanity,  and 
both  therefore  disappear  before  the  doctrine  of 
the  essential  divinity  of  the  soul.  If  man  is  nor- 
mally good,  then  it  follows  that  "sin  has  no  exist- 
ence apart  from  the  misery  that  bad  conditions 
create,"  as  Prof.  Patten  asserts;  and  this  being 
the  case,  the  church  must  make  it  its  supreme  busi- 
ness to  banish  these  conditions  as  the  first  step 
toward  the  banishment  of  sin  itself.  This  con- 
clusion is  inevitable — and  no  theory  that  human 
nature  cannot  be  changed  by  law,  or  that  the  indi- 
vidual must  himself  be  the  agent  of  reform,  can 
stand  for  an  instant  in  the  way  of  its  ultimate 
acceptance. 


CHAPTER  X 
CONCLUSION 

(a)  summary  of  the  argument 

THE  course  of  our  argument  must  by  now  be 
clear.  It  is  taken  for  granted  at  the  outset 
that  the  distinctive  work  of  the  church  is  the  sal- 
vation of  the  individual,  to  use  the  familiar  theo- 
logical phrase — the  making  of  the  individual  man 
or  woman  to  be  perfect  after  the  likeness  of  Al- 
mighty God.  Interpreting  the  individual  as  an  iso- 
lated personal  entity,  having  no  essential  relations 
with  the  social  organism,  the  church  has  always 
undertaken  to  achieve  its  end  by  exerting  its 
redemptive  influence  directly  upon  the  individual 
soul,  without  any  regard  whatsoever  for  its  physi- 
cal and  social  environment ;  and  thus  have  resulted 
the  Catholic  doctrine  of  confession,  the  Protestant 
doctrine  of  conversion,  and  the  Liberal  doctrine 
of  moral  education.  To-day,  however,  there  has 
come  a  new  interpretation  of  the  individual  which 
has  achieved  a  revolution  in  our  thought  and  must 
eventually  of  course  achieve  a  revolution  in  all  of 
our  methods  and  ideals  of  practical  endeavour. 
Partly  because  of  the  teachings  of  the  evolutionary 

250 


Conclusion  251 

science  and  philosophy  of  our  time,  and  partly 
because  of  the  increasing  complexity  of  the  fabric 
of  our  modem  civiHsation,  we  have  come  to  recog- 
nise clearly  to-day,  what  had  been  only  dimly  seen 
before  by  a  comparatively  few  minds,  that  the 
individual  at  bottom  is  a  social  creature  and  must 
be  understood  and  influenced  only  from  the  social 
point  of  view.  The  members  live  only  as  the  body 
itself  lives.  The  parts  mean  nothing  save  as  they 
are  parts  of  a  whole.  Which  means,  in  other 
words,  that  the  individual  realises  his  individuality 
only  as  he  lives  in  organised  association  with  his 
fellows,  and  is  thus  dependent  upon  what  we  know 
as  society. 

This  revelation  of  the  essentially  social  character 
of  the  individual  has  meant,  of  course,  a  revolution 
in  all  of  our  practical  activities  affecting  the  lives 
of  men  and  women.  It  has  given  us  a  new  medi- 
cine, a  new  philanthropy,  a  new  education,  a  new 
criminology — the  one  common  feature  of  them  all 
being  the  recognition  of  the  ultimate  social  cause 
of  most  individual  abnormality,  whether  it  be 
disease,  poverty,  ignorance,  or  crime;  and  of  the 
necessity  of  finding  the  cure  of  this  abnormality 
not  in  the  transformation  of  the  individual  but  in 
the  reconstruction  of  society.  It  is  this  sudden 
change  in  viewpoint,  from  the  individual  to  society, 
which  has  raised  the  social  question;  and  it  is  the 
wide-spread  realisation  of  the  significance  of  this 
change,  which  has  made  our  age,  as  Prof.  Peabody 
has  pointed  out,  "the  age  of  the  social  question." 


252  Function  of  the  Church 

Now  what  is  true  of  every  other  field  of  human 
endeavour,  is  true  also,  of  course,  of  religion.  With 
our  new  understanding  of  the  social  nature  of  the 
individual  life,  we  find  that  sin,  like  disease  and 
poverty,  can  no  longer  be  explained  upon  the  basis 
of  individual  abnormality,  which  has  found  its 
traditional  and  characteristic  expression  in  the 
doctrine  of  the  depravity  of  human  nature.  On 
the  contrary,  we  know  that  human  nature  is  essen- 
tially good  and  not  bad ;  and  that  the  basic  causes 
of  its  sins  are  to  be  found  not  in  the  soul  but  in  the 
social  environment  of  the  soul.  If  the  individual  is 
to  be  saved,  therefore,  it  is  with  this  environment — 
that  is,  social  conditions — that  religion  must 
directly  deal ;  and  this  means  that  the  church,  like 
the  hospital  and  the  charity  society, — the  minister, 
like  the  physician  and  the  philanthropist, — must 
be  first  and  foremost  active  agents  of  social  reform. 
This  of  course  means  a  church  almost  wholly 
different  from  anything  that  Christendom  has 
ever  seen,  but  not  a  church  wholly  different  from 
that  conceived  by  the  mind  of  Christ.  If  anything 
is  evident  in  the  life  of  Jesus,  it  is  that,  from  his 
very  desire  to  emancipate  humanity,  he  found  it 
necessary  to  become  a  reformer  of  society,  and  is 
thus  understood  only  as  he  is  seen  in  his  distinctive 
role  as  a  social  revolutionist;  and  if  anything  is 
evident  in  the  history  of  Christianity,  it  is  that  the 
church  was  diverted  from  this  original  spirit  of 
the  Master  by  theological  preconceptions  and 
historic  influences  which  were  utterly  foreign  to 


Conclusion  253 

the  movement.  In  entering  upon  the  work  of 
social  reform,  therefore,  as  the  essential  step  in  the 
performance  of  its  distinctive  work  of  saving  the 
individual  to  the  normal  standards  of  existence, 
the  church,  so  far  from  betraying  its  mission,  is 
in  reality  only  feeling  once  again  that  initial  social 
impulse,  by  which  it  was  dominated  for  a  few 
years  in  the  beginning,  and  thus  only  yielding 
once  again  to  the  perfect  mastery  of  Christ. 

(b)  the  final  outcome— the  banishment  of  sin 

—A  PERFECTED  HUMANITY— THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 

And  what  shall  we  say  as  to  "the  conclusion  of 
the  whole  matter?" 

The  natural  conclusion  would  seem  to  be  that, 
with  the  transformation  of  social  conditions  from 
the  prevailing  injustice  of  the  present  to  the  ideal 
justice  of  the  future,  sin  will  practically  disappear. 
Nor  would  I  avoid  this  sweeping  and  perhaps 
startling  generaHsation.  "Sin,"  says  Dr.  Lyman 
Abbott,  "is  a  disease."  Now  physical  disease,  we 
are  being  told  by  our  medical  experts  to-day,  can 
be  annihilated  through  the  transformation  of  the 
environment.  And  I  have  already  pointed  out 
that  the  physicians  are  proving  this  wonderful 
affirmation  in  the  case  of  such  frightful  scourges 
as  cholera,  yellow-fever,  typhoid-fever,  and  lastly 
tuberculosis.  In  other  words— let  us  have  the 
kind  of  world  that  we  ought  to  have,  and  disease 
will  forthwith  disappear!    And  if  this  be  true  of 


254  Function  of  the  Church 

physical  disease,  it  ought  also  to  be  true  of  all 
other  kinds  of  disease.  It  is  because  poverty  has 
suddenly  come  to  be  recognised  as  in  its  essential 
nature  fundamentally  a  disease,  that  we  know 
to-day  that  its  further  continuance  is  inexcusable. 
"Poverty,"  says  Dr.  Devine,  to  quote  his  familiar 
statement  once  again,  "like  tuberculosis,  is  pre- 
ventable and  curable."  And  it  is  because  sin  must 
also  be  regarded  now  as  such  a  disease,  that  the 
similar  possibility  of  its  annihilation  is  disclosed. 
A  perfect  social  environment,  that  is,  should  pro- 
duce— or  rather  permit — a  normal  manhood;  and 
a  normal  manhood  should  mean  health  and  not 
disease,  virtue  and  not  vice!  That  this  hope  is 
not  wholly  chimerical  is  shown  by  the  sober  reflec- 
tion of  such  a  man  as  Prof.  Patten.  He  does  not 
shrink  for  an  instant  from  the  logical  conclusion 
which  must  be  drawn  from  this  thesis,  "Sin  is 
misery,  misery  is  poverty,  and  the  antidote  of 
poverty  is  income" — a  thesis  based  upon  the 
hypothesis,  as  we  have  seen,  that  "man  is  good 
and  nature  perfect."  Conceiving  of  the  coming  of 
a  new  and  better  society  to  replace  the  present 
one,  which  shall  be  "dominantly  normal  in  its 
attributes,"  he  states  his  belief  that  the  result 
will  be  the  production  of  a  normal  man  who  will 
be  good  by  an  almost  instinctive  process.  Certain 
at  least  it  is,  according  to  his  mind,  that  character, 
— virtue, — "the  good  life," — "the  new  birth," — 
will  not  have  "to  be  worked  for,"  as  under  the  old 
order  of  thought,  but  will  "come  of  itself."    "To 


Conclusion  255 

make  men  normal,"  he  says,  "  is  to  start  a  train  that 
leads  to  religious  awakening.  .  .  .  We  can  plough 
the  land,  but  the  fruit  comes  in  its  own  way." 
Nor  is  this  supposition  altogether  new.  For  it  is 
now  more  than  two  decades  ago  that  Herbert 
Spencer  announced  it  as  his  belief  that  the  time 
would  come  when  the  voice  of  conscience  would 
no  longer  be  heard  within  the  human  heart,  since 
the  performance  of  duty  would  become  as  instinc- 
tive as  breathing,  and  virtue  as  a  consequence 
automatic ! 

The  logical  conclusion  of  our  thesis,  therefore, 
is  the  automatic  redemption  of  the  individual 
soul  through  the  deliberate  reconstruction  of  the 
social  organism.  And  yet  it  is  doubtful  if  logic  is 
any  sounder  here  than  elsewhere  in  actual  human 
living.  For  when  all  things  have  been  said  and 
done,  we  must  never  forget,  what  has  been  duly 
emphasised  above,  that,  in  addition  to  the  factor 
of  the  social  environment,  there  enter  into  the 
problem  of  all  human  destiny,  the  two  ever-con- 
stant factors  of  heredity  and  the  will.  Heredity 
can  be  dismissed  from  further  consideration,  as 
only  the  factor  of  environment  passed  along  to 
later  generations.  But  the  factor  of  the  will 
remains  as  something  wholly  distinct.  So  long 
as  a  man  is  a  man  and  not  merely  a  jelly-fish,  he 
will  always  be  able  to  refuse  to  give  obedience  to 
those  laws  of  cleanliness  and  temperance  and  self- 
restraint,  which  can  alone  insure  the  banishment 
of  all  disease  from  a  perfect  natural  environment. 


256  Function  of  the  Church 

So  long  as  a  man  is  a  man,  he  will  always  be  able  to 
refuse  to  practise  those  virtues  of  industry,  thrift, 
sobriety,  perseverance,  which  can  alone  insure  the 
absolute  disappearance  of  poverty,  even  from  an 
ideally  just  social  order.  And  in  the  same  way,  so 
long  as  a  man  is  a  man,  he  will  always  be  able  to 
yield  to  the  temptations  which  so  easily  beset  him 
and  thus  make  sin  an  ever-present  reality  even 
in  the  Kingdom  of  God  itself.  Even  the  most 
sanguine  of  modem  physicians  does  not  dare  to 
hope  for  the  elimination  of  more  than  90%  of  all 
existing  disease.  Even  the  most  radical  of  modern 
social  workers  still  reserves  a  measure  of  poverty 
as  the  result  of  individual  frailty.  And  in  the 
same  way,  we  must  conceive  of  sin  as  still  existent 
to  some  extent,  whatever  the  outward  conditions 
of  the  social  organism.  ^  In  other  words,  just  as  the 
problem  of  the  free  negro  remained  after  the  prob- 
lem of  the  enslaved  negro  had  been  solved,  so 
will  the  problem  of  the  emancipated  soul  still 
remain  after  social  justice  has  everywhere  been 
established.  To  assert  anything  else  would  be  to 
interpret  man  not  at  all  as  a  son  of  God,  endowed 
with  all  the  divine  powers  of  the  free  will,  but  a 
mere  piece  of  automatic  mechanism. 

But  if  the  absolute  banishment  of  sin  cannot  be 
conceived  of  as  the  practical  result  of  systematic 
social  reconstruction,  the  banishment  of  sin  as  a 

' "  Until  the  hearts  of  men  are  changed,  we  can  hope  for  no 
absolute  annihilation  of  the  social  evil." — "Report  of  Chicago 
Vice  Commission,"  p.  27. 


Conclusion  257 

problem  can  and  must  be  so  conceived.  In  a 
well-ordered  society,  says  Dr.  Robinson,  the  10% 
of  unavoidable  disease  consequent  upon  individ- 
ual weakness  and  excess  would  not  be  even 
noticeable;  and,  as  a  problem  of  human  life, 
would  wholly  disappear.  In  a  similarly  well- 
ordered  society,  says  Miss  Brandt,  poverty  would 
be  reduced  to  a  minimum  so  small  as  to  become  a 
negligible  factor  in  the  problem  of  the  race.  And 
exactly  the  same  thing  is  true  of  sin!  Granted 
that  a  justly  organised  social  system  would  pro- 
duce the  normal  man,  and  that  the  impulses  of 
the  normal  man  are  naturally  good  and  not  bad, — 
and  the  amount  of  actual  sin  remaining  as  the 
result  of  the  action  of  the  perverse  and  obstinate 
and  distorted  will  would  not  be  a  subject  of  any 
serious  concern.  We  can  never  conceive  of  a  time 
perhaps  when  the  physician  will  not  have  to  heal 
disease,  the  charity-worker  relieve  poverty,  and 
the  minister  train  the  will,  in  certain  isolated 
individual  cases;  but  we  can  conceive  of  a  time 
when  these  cases  would  be  so  comparatively  few, 
and  the  task  under  normal  social  conditions  there- 
fore so  comparatively  light,  that  the  problem  in 
each  case  as  a  problem  would  rightly  be  said  to 
have  vanished  altogether. 

"The  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter,"  there- 
fore, is  that  the  social  factor  is  the  essential  factor 
in  the  problem  of  individual  redemption.  With 
this  unsolved,  nothing  else  will  for  a  single  moment 
avail.  With  this  conquered,  everything  else  is 
17 


258  Function  of  the  Church 

easy.  This  is  the  strategic  point  to  be  assailed 
to-day,  if  we  hope  ever  to  win  the  fight  for  God. 
This  is  the  "nearest  duty,"  as  Carlyle  put  it,  if 
we  hope  ever  to  achieve  our  end.  For  in  general 
terms  we  may  safely  assert,  that,  with  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  Kingdom  of  God  upon  the  earth, 
the  problem  of  the  individual  soul  will  once  for  all 
be  solved — or  at  least  be  possible  of  solution !  And 
is  not  this  what  Jesus,  with  his  "revolutionary 
consciousness,"  may  have  had  in  mind,  when  he 
said  to  his  disciples  and  followers,  "Seek  ye  first 
the  Kingdom  of  God,  and  all  things  else  will  be 
added  unto  you." 


APPENDIX 

(a  selected  list  of  books  on  the  general  subject 
OF  the  church  and  the  social  question) 

"The  modem  emphasis  upon  the  social  aspects  of 
religion  may  be  said  to  be  first  clearly  expressed  in 
Prof,  Seeley's  'Ecce  Homo/  1867.  The  same  note 
was  struck  in  the  Bampton  Lectures  of  Canon  Free- 
mantle,  'The  World  as  the  Subject  of  Redemption,* 
1885,  an  historical  survey  of  much  originality  and 
power.  Less  academic,  but  rich  in  spiritual  insight, 
were  the  Bohlen  Lectures  of  Phillips  Brooks,  'The 
Influence  of  Jesus,'  1879,  Chapter  IL,  'The  Influence 
of  Jesus  in  the  Social  Life  of  Man.*  To  these  evi- 
dences of  Christian  teaching  applied  to  social  life  may 
be  added,  out  of  many  titles :  Abbott, '  Christianity  and 
Social  Problems,'  1897;  Fairbairn,  'Religion  in  History 
and  Modem  Life,'  1894;  Gladden,  'Applied  Christian- 
ity,' 1886;  Ely,  'Social  Aspects  of  Christianity,'  1889; 
Gore,  'The  Social  Doctrine  of  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,'  'Econ.  Rev.,'  April,  1892;  Bosanquet,  'The 
Civilisation  of  Christendom,'  1893;  Hodges,  'Faith 
and  Social  Service,'  1896." — Francis  G.  Peabody,  in 
"A  Guide  to  Reading  in  Social  Ethics  and  Allied 
Subjects,"  published  by  Harvard  University,  1910, 
page  216. 

To  this  list  of  early  utterances  upon  the  subject 
should  be  added  many  of  the  sermons  and  addresses 

259 


26o  Appendix 

of  Theodore  Parker,  who  stands  as  the  chief  of  all 
American  preachers  to  understand  the  significance  of 
socialised  religion.  See  especially  the  two  volumes  in 
the  Centenary  Edition  of  Parker's  Works,  published 
by  the  American  Unitarian  Association,  1910,  entitled 
"Social  Classes  in  a  Republic"  and  "Sins  and  Safe- 
guards of  Society." 

Among  the  more  important  of  the  great  flood  of 
books  upon  the  subject  are  the  following : 

Abbott,  Lyman — "  Social  Questions  and  Jesus." 

"The  Spirit  of  Democracy." 
Baker,  Ray  Stannard — "The  Spiritual  Unrest." 
Balmforth,  Ramsden — "The  New  Reformation." 
Brown,  Charles  Reynolds — "The  Social  Message  of 

the  Modern  Pulpit" 
Bruce,  William  R. — "The  Social  Aspects  of  Chris- 
tian MoraHty." 
Cairns,    D.    S. — "Christianity    and    the    Modem 

World." 
Campbell,  Reginald  J.—"  The  New  Theology." 

"Christianity  and  the  Social 
Order." 
Chadwick,  William  E.— "The  Social  Teaching  of 

St.  Paul." 
"Social  Relationships  in  the 
Light  of  Christianity." 
Coleman,  James  M. — "Social  Ethics." 
Commons,    John    R. — "Social    Reform    and    the 

Church." 
Cone,  Orello — "Rich  and  Poor  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment." 
Crafts,  Wilbur  F. — "  Practical  Christian  Sociology." 


Appendix  261 

Crapsey,  Algernon  S. — "  Politics  and  Religion." 
Crawford,    William    H.— "The    Church    and    the 

Slums." 
Cunningham,  W. — "Christianity  and  Social  Ques- 
tions." 
Davidson,  Morrison — "That  Great  Lying  Church." 
Earp,    Edwin    L. — "Social    Aspects    of    Religious 

Institutions." 
Gladden,  Washington— "  The  New  Idolatry." 
"Social  Salvation." 
"Tools  and  the  Man." 
"Christianity    and    Social- 
ism." 
"The  Church  and  Modem 
Life." 
Haggard,  Rider — "Regeneration." 
Hall,    Thomas   C. — "Social    Meaning   of   Modem 
Religious     Movements     in 
England." 
Harnack,  Adolf— "What  is  Christianity?" 

"The  Social  Gospel." 
Haw,    George    (Editor) — "Christianity    and    the 

Working.Classes." 
Heath,  Richard— "  The  Captive  City  of  God." 
Heermance,      Edgar      L. — "Democracy     in     the 

Church." 
Henderson,  Charles  R. — "  Chalmers's  Christian  and 

Civic  Economy." 
"Social    Duties    from    the 
Christian     Point     of 
View." 
Herron,  George  D. — "The  Christian  Society." 
Hocking,  Silas — "  Democratic  Christianity." 


262  Appendix 

Hodges  and  Reichert — "The  Administration  of  an 

Institutional  Church." 
Holland,     Robert     A.  — "The     Church     of    the 

World." 
Hughes,  Hugh  Price — "Social  Christianity." 
Hyde,    William    De    Witte—"  Outlines    of    Social 

Theology." 
Jenks,  Jeremiah — "Political  and  Social  Significance 
of  the  Life  and  Teaching  of 
Jesus." 
Judson,  Edward — "The  Institutional  Church." 
Kaufmann,  Moritz — "Christian Socialism." 
Kennedy,    Charles   Rann — "The    Servant   in   the 

House."  (A  Drama.) 
King,  H.  C. — "Theology  and  the  Social  Conscious- 
ness." 
Leighton,  Joseph  A. — "Jesus  Christ  and  the  Civi- 
lisation of  To-day," 
Loomis,  S.  L. — "Modern  Cities  and  their  Religious 

Problems." 
Macfarland,  Charles  S. — "The  Christian  Ministry 

and  the  Social  Order." 
McGinley,  Anna  A.—"  The  Profit  of  Love." 
Mathews,  Shailer — "The  Social  Teaching  of  Jesus." 
"The  Social  Gospel." 
"The  Gospel  and  the  Modem 

Man." 
"The  Church  and  the  Changing 
Order." 
Mead,    G.    W. — "Modem    Methods    in    Church 

Work." 
Ming,  John  J. — "The   Characteristics  of  the  Re- 
ligion of  Modern  Socialism." 


Appendix  263 

Nash,    H.    S. — "The  Genesis  of  the    Social    Con- 
science." 
Paradise,  Frank  I. — "The  Church  and  the  Indi- 
vidual." 
Patten,  Simon  N. — "The  Social  Basis  of  Religion." 
Peabody,  Francis  G. — "Jesus  Christ  and  the  Social 

Question." 
"The  Approach  to  the  Social 
Question." 
Peile,  James  H.  F.— "The  Reproach  of  the  Gospel." 
Plantz,    Samuel — "The    Church    and    the    Social 

Problem." 
Rainsford,  William  S. — "The  Church's  Opportunity 

in  the  City  To-day." 
Rauschenbusch,    Walter — "Christianity    and    the 

Social  Crisis." 
"For      God      and      the 
People." 
Reid,  Andrew — "Vox  Clamantium." 
Richmond,  Wilfred — "Christian  Economics." 
Ross,  Edward  A. — "  Sin  and  Society." 

"  Latter-Day  Sinners  and  Saints." 
Schmidt,  Karl — "The  Social  Results  of  Early  Chris- 
tianity." 
"Socialised  Church,  The" — (A  book  composed  of 

eleven  papers  read  at 
the  First  National 
Conference  of  Social 
Workers  of  Metho- 
dism.) 
Stelzle,  Charles — "Christianity's  Storm  Centre." 

"The  Social  Application  of  Re- 
ligion." 


264  Appendix 

Strong,  Josiah— "  The  New  Era." 

"The  Next  Great  Awakening." 
"My  Religion  in  Every-Day  Life." 
"The    Gospel   of   the    Kingdom." 
(A  course  of  study.) 
Tippy,  Worth  M.— "  The  Socialised  Church." 
Thompson,  C.  Bertrand — "The  Churches  and  the 

Wage-Earners." 
Thompson,  Herbert  M. — "The  Purse  and  the  Con- 
science." 
Ward,  H.  F.— "Social  Ministry." 
Westcott,  Brooks  Foss — "Social  Aspects  of  Chris- 
tianity." 
"Christian    Social   Union 
Addresses." 
White,  Bouck— "The  Call  of  the  Carpenter." 
Wood  worth,  Arthur  V. — "Christian  Socialism  in 

England." 
Zueblin,  Charles — "The  Religion  of  a  Democrat." 


Date  Due 


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